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It has been about 4 years since we booked a vacation
trip on a tour or cruise, with Covid having cancelled our planned 2020 trip to
Oberammergau and the Danube River Cruise to Budapest. We did not feel
comfortable rebooking it in 2022 and opted to stay a little closer to home. The
American Queen Voyages Company had been sending us information about a cruise
that lasted 9 days and covered the Great Lakes of North America, with stops in
both Canada and the United States. We had discussed the possibility of doing
this trip with our friends Marti and Tony Giacobe while doing Thanksgiving last
November. It turned out the timing worked for both of us for this summer. Suzy
booked the tour through Sandra Dugan, an acquaintance who has a travel agency
(Classic Cruises), and we set our departure for August 9. Suzy and I decided to
use our frequent flyer miles to book our own flights to Toronto where this
particular cruise began. We do this by sitting down at our respective computers
and going in and booking our flights simultaneously. It normally works well,
but this time we got crossed up as Suzy mistakenly selected a flight for August
10 while I got the correct flight on August 9. By the time we discovered the error
my flight on the 9th was sold out, so she had to take one that left
an hour later. This was of some concern given all the issues the airlines have
had with cancellations, lost luggage, etc., but when it came time to leave, all
worked as it was supposed to. I arrived in Toronto with enough time to get some
Canadian money, retrieve my bags, and finish the book I was reading just as
Suzy arrived at baggage claim. We took a taxi to the Toronto Hilton, checked in
on the 27th floor, which had great views of one of the main streets
in Toronto, and went to the designated meeting room to process in for our
ship’s departure the next day. This included taking a rapid Covid Test as well
as doing a second Arrive Canada app document on our smart phones as we would
leave and re-enter Canada by boat an additional time during the trip. We
finished all of the check in procedures in about an hour and had time to look
over some suggested places to eat near the hotel. We ended up walking to the
next corner and having a very good meal at a Greek restaurant, which set the tone
for many more good meals to follow. Marti and Tony came in on later flights
from Atlanta, so we did not meet up until breakfast the next morning.
The trip included a bus
tour of Toronto the next morning which Marty and Tony took advantage of. We had
done a lot of sightseeing on our own on a previous trip that began in Toronto,
so we chose to spend the portion of the day before we had to bus to the ship to
explore some more on our own by foot. We saw the main government buildings, a
large plaza with Toronto spelled out in big block letters, a farmers market,
the much larger covered St. Lawrence Market, the Distillery District (which was
an actual distillery at one time in the past, but is now an area closed off to
traffic that features shops and restaurants amongst all the old distillery
buildings and equipment), the first post office in Toronto that features a
small museum where we could try our hand at quill pen writing on high rag
content paper. One of the interesting things about the architecture downtown you
will see in the photos is the mix of modern steel and glass buildings with the
older 19th century buildings and how when the light is right, the
older buildings are reflected on the sides of the modern skyscrapers. We noted
how well the traffic downtown followed signals and made way for pedestrians at
crosswalks, much different from our aggressive US drivers.
Our bags had been
picked up in the morning from outside our rooms as we had tagged them all for
the ship direct to our assigned staterooms, so we were free to roam about
unencumbered by luggage. We made our way back to the hotel, had a late lunch,
and awaited our busses to the ship around 3:30. We had a quick trip to the port
terminal, passed quickly through security, and boarded the “Ocean Voyager”. Our
first stop on board was to pick up our key cards for our staterooms. After that,
we were free to get acquainted with the ship, do some unpacking, and gather in
the main lounge for our briefing for the coming day and the required safety
drill. Afterwards we were free until dinner in the main dining room at 7 p.m. We
had linked up with Marty and Tony again and noted they were two doors down from
us. We had dinner at the same table and we took almost all of our meals, including
breakfast and lunch as well as dinner together with them at the same table for
four each day. Across the hall from our stateroom was the drummer for the
ship’s musical trio. I bumped into him as we were leaving for dinner and noted
he was wearing a tie. Thinking he was another passenger, I asked him if that
was a requirement and he told me that he was part of the band and he was
required to wear a tie for the evening’s performance. We chatted a bit and I
jokingly told him that if the band needed a bass player, I would be happy to
sit in. He took that more seriously than I meant it to be and said he would try
to work it out. More to come on that later. I should mention that on board the
ship it was totally open bar. Drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, were
included in the cost of our trip. There was a charge for premium brands, but most
people I noted were happy with what was being served for free. I took advantage
of several sodas each evening, while Suzy and the Giacobe’s stuck to white and
red wine. The head of the dining room was aware of Suzy’s gluten free meal
requirements and assigned one of his headwaiters to ensure she could order
ahead of for next day if she wanted something that had to be adjusted to make
it gluten free. The menus varied daily, although there were certain things you
could always order ala carte. The dinners had a choice of starter/appetizer, a
cup of soup, choice of a salad, choice of one of four entrée’s and a choice of
desserts. If none of the entrée’s suited you, you could always have a lobster
tail or a steak. Dinner usually ended about 8 p.m. and you were free for the
evening. The band played music in the main lounge 9-10 p.m. each evening,
featuring different styles each night. The guitar player was also the cruise
director and history lecturer on board and was quite a good musician. They had
a keyboardist playing an electric piano that looked like a baby grand and then
the drummer. We did go down to the main lounge for the music almost every night
and even did a little dancing. Marti and Tony always called it a night after
dinner and we would see them again at the table for breakfast. We had sailed
away from Toronto around 6 p.m. and by the time we were ready to go to bed, we
were well out in the middle of Lake Ontario. The waters were relatively calm so
we did not feel much of any motion as we drifted off to sleep after a long day.
Our initial port of
call was Port Colbourne, Ontario, near Niagara Falls. We arrived around 6:30 in
the morning and after breakfast we departed by bus for the falls from the
Canadian side. Our local guide gave us the local area history and information
that kept us entertained for the hour or so it took to get the Niagara Falls
area. Once parked we walked a few blocks to the ramp down to get on a two deck “Hornblower”
boat ride that took us past the Bridal Veil Falls and up into the Niagara Falls
itself. We were issued disposable ponchos and could get as drenched as we
wanted to by going up to the top level. Suzy and I stayed on the second level
and got just a little wet, but had great views. After the boat ride, we had a
little time to walk around the area and take more photos, then re-boarded the
bus, and took a drive downriver with the guide pointing out various things of
interest along the way. Our route eventually brought us back to the ship in
time to have lunch aboard. Marty and Tony had taken a premium excursion that
included a buffet lunch in the large tower building overlooking the Niagara
area, so we did not see them until later in the afternoon. After lunch, we
attended a lecture on Great Lakes wineries, which are making a name for
themselves due to the favorable microclimates that exist around most of the
lakes. All passengers were to be back at 5:30 and we set off for the Welland
Canal Locks and Lake Erie. The band provided some smooth jazz background music
for cocktail hour beginning at 6 p.m., followed by the ship’s Captain’s
Reception and introductions of his key staff on board. At 6:45, we had our port
talk for our arrival the next day in Cleveland. Dinner followed at 7 and at 9
Suzy and I took in the music in the lounge with the night’s theme of classic
country. We were back in our stateroom ready for bed a little after 10 p.m.
looking forward to our stop in Cleveland. This was pretty much the pattern we
followed for the days we had a port call stop.
We arrived in Cleveland
at 8 a.m. and docked right next to the football and baseball stadium, which is
a new and looks very nice from the outside. Our local guide on the bus we took
later joked that there was a long suffering fan of the inept Cleveland Browns football
team who in his will requested that 6 members of the Brown’s team act as
pallbearers at his funeral so they could “Let him down one last time!” After breakfast,
we proceeded to get off the ship and check in through the customs and
immigration office at the port as we were arriving back in the US from Canada.
Once cleared we were able to get on “hop-on hop-off” buses that took us around
the city and with stops at the Cleveland museum of Art, the Cleveland History
Center, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Cleveland Public Square
featuring “The Old Stone Church”, the oldest building in the city. We followed
the ship’s staff recommendation to ride the bus around one circuit, get the
pitch from the local guide as we did so, then get off and explore the things we
wanted to see most, re-board another bus that came by every 20 minutes and see
something else. Our time was limited to be back onboard by 5:30 p.m. so we got
off at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and stayed there for quite a bit of our
time in port. The place was truly amazing, and in some aspects a bit
overwhelming, as there are so many displays of memorabilia from every era of
music that contributed to R&R from the 1920’s up to the breakout in the
1950’s and every genre that followed up to the present. The building is a
pyramid shape and has 6 levels with ever decreasing square footage on each
successive floor. One level was given over to individual cubicles where you
could pick up an instrument, get a video lesson on it, and play along with a rock
song while you were being recorded. We were there early enough in the day that
I was able to get a cubicle with an electric bass and amplifier, tune it up,
take my lesson, and play along with “Crazy for You” by Heart. They also had one
floor that had a small auditorium with special lighting and many speakers that
played a video compilation of many of the rock artists performing at the Hall
of Fame induction ceremonies. It was short bits of a lot of people’s
performances, but the sound and lights were all around you with a large screen
that made you feel like you were there. Another floor had a small theater that
was showing the Beatles rooftop concert. The Beatles are featured this summer
in a temporary exhibit of all of their material and memorabilia from their
entire career as a group and individual solo careers later. We decided against
spending the hour plus to see the movie. We had split up earlier as I am slower
going through exhibits than is Suzy and was surprised to get a text from her
that she had fallen at an escalator and was up in the snack bar area getting
looked at. I got there in time to see she had a good scrape on her knee but was
otherwise unhurt. I bought us a soda to share and after ensuring she was fine
we continued viewing the exhibits, but stayed together after that. We ended up
doing lunch outside on the grounds with food trucks set up selling various kinds
of things to eat.
After lunch, we took
some outside photos, caught the bus to the History Center, and spent a bit of
time there. They have an old functioning carousel from a local Cleveland
Amusement park that was in operation for many years reset up in the building.
We took a ride on it and took some photos. They had a lot of local historical
displays, plus an adjoining period home to see, but the facility was about to
close at 4 p.m., so we did a quick look at the vintage cars, planes, and motorcycles
on display, and caught the bus making the circuit back to the ship. All aboard
was 5:30 again with a 6 p.m. departure. I was impressed with Cleveland’s
renewal and revitalization. I had last been in Cleveland in the late 1970’s and
it frankly was a dump. It now has a lot to offer with medical and high tech
industries supplanting the old manufacturing base, which still exists on a
smaller and much cleaner scale. The renowned Cleveland Clinic is an enormous
medical complex that covers quite a bit of area in the city and is its largest
employer. There are loads of cultural things to do, a vibrant theater and arts
scene, and lots of homegrown music as well. Our band’s guitarist got his start-playing
clubs in Cleveland at an early age and so of course, our entertainment that
evening was all music from artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame.
Our next port of call
was Detroit, Michigan. We arrived at 8:00 a.m. after a long and slow travel up
the Detroit River entering from Lake Erie just before dawn. I watched us pass
miles of industrial sites along the river, some old blast furnace steel mills,
and other relics of the past, but also many functioning refineries and plants
of all kinds still active. Detroit has an interesting geographical fact about
it. It is the only place in the U.S. where you go south to go into Canada. We
sailed right under the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit to Windsor, Ontario,
which is Canada’s industrial and automotive manufacturing center. For this stop
Suzy, Tony, Marti, and I had selected the premium excursion experience that
took most of the day to do. We began with a bus tour of the city with a local
guide who was short on knowledge of local history, but was a real architectural
maven who told us all about the buildings we were seeing. There has been
revitalization efforts going on in Detroit and the waterfront area is quite
nice, anchored by the Renaissance Center towers that are now the headquarters
offices of General Motors. It has been a slow going effort as the population in
Detroit has fallen by over 50% over the last 40 years, leaving many abandoned
buildings behind. I was stationed outside of Detroit with the Army in the late
70’s and after the riots of the late 60’s, the city looked like a war zone in
many areas. That has now been cleaned up a lot, but there is a long way yet to
go to match what Cleveland has done with their city. Detroit is still all about
the auto industry, and has not embraced high tech and medical industries as
much as Cleveland has.
Having said that, our
excursion was focused out of the city in the Dearborn area and was all about
Ford—Henry and his successors. Our first stop was the Ford museum, which is an
amazing collection of Americana from historical artifacts, to exhibits of
manufacturing from colonial to modern times, furniture, crafts, farm equipment,
steam engines, electrical power plants, trains, planes, and automobiles from
every era. I had been here 40 some years ago and it was much the same, but had
updated exhibits that included displays of American Revolutionary history, the
history of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and eventual civil rights victories.
The Birmingham bus that Rosa Parks sat in is displayed with interpretive guides
to tell the stories of that era. You can walk through the bus and sit in her
seat. All of this is a bit overwhelming and not everything interested Suzy, so
we moved on to the adjacent Greenfield Village. This is an outdoor exhibition
setting of all kinds of artisan and manufacturing crafts from around the turn
of the last century, to include Model T rides and a steam train ride around the
complex that burns coal and gets soot on your clothes just like back in those
days! There are a number of historical homes and buildings associated with
famous people that have been moved onto the site from around the country. Henry
Ford’s boyhood home is there an open for touring, along with Thomas Edison’s
workshop, and the original Ford Motor Car Company building. There are several
period eating establishments, a farm with crops and animals and of course, a
vintage carousel and a village green where cricket was being demonstrated with
people in period costumes. An 1867 era baseball tournament was also underway in
a large field with a national championship tournament going on featuring two
games being played simultaneously and players in period uniforms playing by the
rules of the time. That means there are no gloves, the players call their own
balls and strikes, there is no spitting, and no swearing allowed. As we rode
the steam train past he fields, the players all stopped and gave us hearty
waves. We had a cafeteria-style lunch featuring farm to table foods including
those developed by Luther Burbank and George Washington Carver. We had a set
time to get back to the bus and we made it in plenty of time for our final stop
of the day, which was the Rouge River Ford plant.
This stop was the
highlight of the tour for me, as I had not seen any of the car plants when I
lived there before. This particular plant makes the Ford F-150 pickup. Our bus
dropped us off at the welcome center and after entering the building we were
seated in an auditorium, given a briefing on what we would be doing, then had a
big screen presentation of the history of the Ford River Rouge plant. Here the
assembly line was put into large-scale practice by Henry Ford. His vision was
to have all the raw materials for the vehicles delivered by ship up the Rouge River
and the parts made there in his own steel mills and fabricating plants, and
finally assembled in a long moving line. Thousands of men worked there and over
time became unionized, limped through the Great Depression, and came roaring
back in wartime production of armaments for WWII. After the film, we moved to a
different auditorium for a multisensory presentation of the assembly process
for the Ford F-150. It was quite well done and an amazing presentation. From
there we exited to elevators, which took us to an observation area that
overlooked the plant. The plant covers many acres of land with flat roofs planted
with vegetation that helps filter rainwater and also help cool the facilities.
This was the only area where we were allowed to take pictures and that is why
that is all I have of the plant tour. All other areas were off limits to photos.
We then went back down the elevators into the final assembly plant and moved
across a corridor to observation platforms that ran completely around the
assembly area looking down from two stories above the assembly floor. You
walked at your own pace and stopped to look at different places where signs let
you know what phase of assembly was being done. The line was not moving when we
first came in as it stops every hour for a ten- minute break for the workers
then starts up again. It was soon moving again and I was amazed at how all the
pieces came together in choreography of the vehicles in constant motion along
tracks that in some cases had platforms for the assemblers to ride along as
they put something together so they would not have to walk to keep up. All the
while little electrical tugs were moving bins of parts in little trains around
to different stations where parts were going to be needed based on computerized
signs. Full bins would be pushed off onto racks level with the trains and empty
ones placed on the trains, which were stopped only long enough to load and
unload bins. The plant runs two 10-hour shifts each weekday and one on Saturday
and Sunday. Each worker does one little step that takes about 5 seconds to do
as the vehicle keeps moving by. Working at full speed, the line can finish an
entire vehicle assembly in just over 4 hours. On the output end, an assembled
vehicle comes off the line every minute. It was just an amazing sight to see.
With the tour completed
it was back on the bus and back to the ship where we met up for a lecture on
the prohibition era in Detroit, one of the main areas illegal liquor was smuggled
onto the US based on the proximity to Windsor, Ontario. The title was “City on
a Still: Detroit in the Prohibition Era. Our presenter was Mickey Lyons, a
journalist who writes about Detroit and is a published author and contributor
to the Detroit Free Press. She had done the lecture on the wine growing and was
not overly interesting; however, this one was well done and captivating. Our
music selections for the evening show were all Detroit sounds to include Motown
and other local sounds. We gave up early as we were tired and headed to bed
about 9:30, having sailed away at 6 p.m., making our way up the St Claire River
past the area where I had lived when stationed there, through Lake St Claire
and eventually into Lake Huron after dark.
Our next day was a full
day of sailing with no port calls. After breakfast, we were on our own until
about 10 a.m. when we had a chance to have a Q&A session with our cruise
director and his two band mates and learn a bit about what their life is like
working on the ship. It was interesting to note their backgrounds and how they
have worked to make a living at music. Two of them have had experience working
the big ocean going cruise ships while this was the drummer’s first experience
doing music on a ship. The drummer shared his contract was up and this was his
last trip as he is going to enter graduate school and get a degree in social
work. We met up with Marty and Tony and played a little bridge in the lounge
until it was time for lunch, had lunch and attended another presentation by our
cruise director Ian about the history and geology of the Great Lakes. He is a
very good lecturer and would make a great teacher. We had a formal tea at 4
p.m. with white glove service and some good tea snacks, a few of which Suzy was
able to have as they were made gluten free. There was an opportunity for some
dance lessons at 5 p.m., which we passed on, the usual cocktail hour jazz at 6,
and our next day’s port call talk about our return to Canada at Little Current
on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. Dinner was at 7 followed by music and dancing at
9. This night’s theme was “Down at the Drive-in”, 50’s and 60’s music. Our
fellow passengers were all about our age and so it was a well-attended evening
with lots of participation on the dance floor, including Suzy and me!
Please see the next
blog entry for the second half of our cruise.
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