Lessons Learned, or "I Told You So"

Well, I didn't actually tell you so, but I'm just about to.

 

It's finally happened. After travelling in so many countries for half a century, I've chosen to pull the plug and cancel an entire trip. 

In case you're wondering if I've turned chicken (like Colonel Sandurz) I have -- but not about the chances of getting sick with the pandemic virus. What did it was the Canadian government speculating about the possibility of again requiring 14-day quarantine for everyone entering the country. Who needs that?

The point of this post is that, thanks to foresight and planning, I'm able to get back over 95% of all the money and loyalty points I expended up front, one way or another. I'm out of pocket for less than $150 and I didn't actually need to lose even that much.

The big # 1 is the cost of the Princess cruise, which was paid up in full since the sail date is only 2 weeks away. Thanks to the premium version of the Princess insurance plan, I got 100% of the cost in future travel credits. If my cancellation had been due to one of the permitted reasons (which it wasn't), I would have gotten a 100% cash refund. Without this, I would have been at the mercy of the fine print in whichever third-party insurance plan I had bought.

Lesson Number One:  Especially in times like these, you need to know exactly what protections and coverages your insurance offers. Don't just buy an insurance plan because the summary says that "Covid coverage is included."

 

The credit is good for a year, but might be rolled over for another year if the travel issues continue to be a complete mess for that long.

 

My air ticket was bought with loyalty points. I cheaped out and bought the refundable-with-a-penalty ticket. For 10% more points, I could have had a fully refundable ticket. I got all my points back, but had to pay a cash cancellation fee to get them. This is where the cash loss took place. Again, these are not normal times we're living in -- hence:

 

Lesson Number Two:  If you can get a fully refundable fare, hotel room, tour cost, etc., DO IT! Pay the extra so you don't lose far more.

 

 By the way, if you carry credit card "insurance," be aware that some card insurers will move heaven and earth to try to wish the bill onto someone else rather than paying it themselves. Don't just assume that the card will cover you. Do some research to find out what others have to say about their experience with the card's insurers.

Hotels: same basic rule. The price may be higher but, the times being what they are, you're far better to get a fully refundable rate. I did -- and that included the hotel where I paid out 140,000 points for a five-night stay. 

Lesson Number Three:  For airlines, hotels, etc., make note of the cancellation deadlines and follow them carefully. They vary, even between hotels in the same chain. I always mark them in my calendar when I add a reservation.

 

Finally: many people choose to use third-party websites to book hotels, flights, etc. Year after year, I see frequent news reports and online stories about people who've gotten into battles with their third-party suppliers over how much they should get back, how long it should take, and (horror of horrors) why the airline or hotel had no record of their reservation and sent them back to the third party supplier to sort it out.

 

I've always dealt direct with the operators for all air, hotel, rail, car rental, and cruise bookings. It took me just one bad experience in my thirties to convince me to do this. I use no third parties at all. I completed all the cancellations except the cruise in about 20 minutes online last night. The two items that included cash refunds are already back in my card account, and the points are back in my air and hotel loyalty accounts.

 

Cancelling the cruise this morning took longer only because I had to wait on the phone for nearly an hour to get through to an agent. Once I got through, it took less than two minutes before I got the verifying email. The only items that will take a bit longer are the prepayments for premium restaurant reservations and shore excursions on the cruise. Those will likely hit my credit card account in less than a week.

 

There's a reason why all the cancellations moved so easily, and here it is.

Lesson Number Four:  When you deal directly with the travel supplier, you come much higher on their list of priorities than when you reserve through a third party. They value you because they know that you value them. Despite what some people think, virtually all major airlines, hotels, car rentals, etc., will match any third party's price for comparable services or facilities so there's no cost advantage in using third party sites. But there is a HUGE advantage in dealing directly with the supplier any time your plans go off the rails.

 

Well, that's about it for now. Sorry to be missing my long-planned trip, but not sorry to miss out on the possibility of a two-week quarantine afterwards. California and Mexico will still be there another day.

City on the Lake

I wasn't exactly planning a blog post for this short little trip, but since I have some decent pictures, why not?

I've flown west across Canada to the city of Kelowna, in the Okanagan Valley of south-central British Columbia, for a 3-night stay.  November is, quite frankly, not the best time to visit Kelowna -- it's too cold to swim in the lake or lie on the beach, and it's too early for there to be much snow at the ski resorts.  But the views are still great -- more on that presently.

Anyway, here I am.  Kelowna is situated at the midpoint of Lake Okanagan, a typical mountain lake -- in other words, a long, narrow ribbon of water stretching dozens or even hundreds of kilometres along a valley, but never more than a few kilometres wide.  The city and its surrounding metropolitan area have a combined population of about 225,000 people.  Here's a panoramic view from Knox Mountain Park, north of the city.  It certainly isn't that sunny this first week in November!

 

By GoToVan from Vancouver, Canada - Knox Mountain Park, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71070883

 

Kelowna's central city area contains some significant cultural facilities, including two sizable stage theatres, and a diverse range of good restaurants, cafes, brew pubs, and the like.

 

The city has developed a lovely waterfront access project, including walkways, parks, beaches, restaurants, and other facilities, the whole spanning the width of the city's downtown area.  And it's right here, on the waterfront, that you'll find the Delta Grand Okanagan Resort.

I don't usually advertise hotels or restaurants here, but in Kelowna this particular hotel is an exception to the rule.  It's the only major chain hotel on the waterfront.  The other chain properties here are mostly mid-market hotels, and are ranged along both sides of the highway from the city north to the airport.  Of course, it does no harm that (thanks to my Marriott loyalty plan status) the Delta upgraded me at no charge to a beautiful corner room on the top floor, overlooking the lake.

Although it's not the particular reason I'm here, the Okanagan is the home of British Columbia's burgeoning wine industry.  Major wineries and small cottage wineries offering tours are scattered all up and down the valley.  More recently, it's also become the home of a burgeoning craft beer sector.  For many visitors, the chance to visit and sample the products of these producers is a key reason to visit the Okanagan Valley.

The rest of my photo gallery includes pictures taken during a couple of walks around the waterfront parks located behind the hotel.  It's just a pity that the weather wasn't kinder.  The few sunny breaks were just that -- breaks -- and they always seemed to end just 10 minutes before I was heading outside.

 

The bridge across the narrows of the lake carries the main highway west to Vancouver, about a 3½ hour drive away.

Although they weren't present in large numbers, there were a few ducks feeding and swimming on Lake Okanagan.

The parkland includes a sizable artificial lake, connected to the natural lake by a small linking canal.  On these serene and windless days, the reflections were striking.

A short distance south of the hotel is a sizable marina, and here I got to witness several sailboats being removed from the lake and placed on trailers for winter storage.

This is "barely-scratch-the-surface" post.  There's a lot more to discover in and around Kelowna, and I certainly plan to return -- but in warmer, sunnier weather!

To close, here are a pair of maps to show Kelowna's location in British Columbia, and to give a more detailed look at the Okanagan Valley and Lake region.

And finally....

Just to add insult to injury, the view from my room changed to look like this on the morning that I had to leave for the airport to fly home.  I would have covered a lot more ground if I'd had two solid days of this kind of sunshine!

Maritime Expedition # 8: Peg o' My Heart

She's the Peg of a great many people's hearts, not just mine.  Her face, from every angle, is a familiar sight in many regions of the world, and meeting her in person is the dream of thousands upon thousands of eager travellers.  And that's just the point where the problem comes in.  But anyway... if you haven't guessed yet who this "Peg o' My Heart" is, here's a photo to give you a hint.

 

 

Okay, now we're all up to speed, right?  Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia.  According to Wikipedia, the name most likely originated from the use of Peggy as a nickname for Margaret, since the cove opens off the larger ocean inlet of St. Margaret's Bay.

 

As you can see in the above photo, it's a very narrow cove with a very narrow outlet to the ocean.  Why, then, would fishermen choose to set up shop here?  This map gives a hint.

 

 

Peggy's Cove is neatly located on one of the outermost edges of this rocky southern coast.  This location gave the fishermen a clear edge in getting out to the best fishing grounds as soon as weather allowed.  Since the weather on this shore can be both violent and capricious, being located that much closer to the fishing grounds was a huge advantage, whether getting out fast when the weather cleared or getting back just as quickly when storms threatened.

 

Peggy's Cove has been renowned for well over a century as a place for artists, photographers, and tourists who flock here to see the weathered old fish sheds in the harbour, and to visit the famous lighthouse out on the rocks.

 

But change inevitably comes.  Peggy's Cove is not a museum reconstruction, but a living, working village.  In the course of time and bad weather, old buildings crumble and must be rebuilt or replaced.  Fishing neither can nor should be restricted to the techniques of the nineteenth century for the sake of picturesqueness.  And the unending and growing swarm of visitors poses its own problems.  This post focuses on the changes that have come, and are still ongoing, to help Peggy's Cove deal with its own popularity.

 

The narrow, twisting road into the village climbs a short hill, drops down a steep grade to pass around the inner end of the cove, and then climbs steeply up again to the parking lot around the Sou'wester Restaurant and gift shop, and the iconic lighthouse.  Just over the crest of that first hill, there's a new visitor's centre on the left side of the road, with public toilets next door, and a sizable parking lot.  I recommend parking here for one simple reason.  The parking lot up by the lighthouse is half closed off by the current expansion project, which (when complete) will include more parking and an accessible viewing deck.  

 

Right across the street from the centre is the Fishermen's Memorial, carved by William E. deGarthe on the 32-metre long rock outcropping behind his house.  It's now a provincial park.

On the day of my visit, the lighthouse lot was a madhouse of cars going around and around, hoping for a space to open up, while the lot by the visitor centre was half empty -- this on a Monday morning in late September.  Also, there are currently no spaces at all for motorhomes and trailers up at the Sou'wester.  The visitor centre lot is the only choice for them.

What's that you say?  You want to be "close"?  The visitor centre lot is actually a lot closer to the famous picture-perfect views of the cove itself and its fishing sheds.  And Peggy's Cove is not a big place.  I spent 20 minutes walking from the visitor centre down past the cove, then up the hill, around the restaurant and the lighthouse view, and back.  That's a 20-minute round-trip with numerous photo pauses.  Do yourself a favour -- park by the visitor centre and save yourself the hassle.

Also, the lighthouse itself is currently under repairs and so not accessible.

 

 

To help with all of the above walking, a nice broad sidewalk has been added along the road to connect the two parking lots.  It's about 4/5 done now, the last stretch up the hill to the Sou'wester being the next item on the work order, I think.  Some parts have been made of close-fitted, squared wooden timbers where the walkway is at or near the water's edge.  Walking around Peggy's Cove just got 99% easier and safer thanks to this improvement (view from the visitor's centre down into the village).

And now, a photo gallery of a few more pictures from around this legendary fishing village.

By the way, this is only the second time in seven or eight visits that I've seen Peggy's Cove in the sunshine, without either clouds or fog.  That was a result of the perfect weather: northerly breeze blowing from the land to the ocean, high pressure, moderate temperature.

Other helpful hints for visiting the Peg o' My Heart:

[1]  Go early, before all the other tourists in Halifax are awake.

[2]  If you want to eat at the Sou'wester (and it is good), make an advance reservation.

[3]  Give yourself an hour to get there, and an hour to get back.  

[4]  Highway 333, like most Nova Scotia secondary highways, has very few warning signs for sharp curves.  Keep alert to all the bends.  If they do put in a warning sign, they really, REALLY mean it!  And don't try to beat the road just to get there a minute or two earlier.  Peggy's Cove isn't running away any time soon.

[5]  The safety signs on the rocks towards the ocean aren't just bureaucratic impositions.  They are there because other Darwin Awards candidates before you have lost their lives on those rocks -- and almost always when they didn't expect anything to go wrong.

 

Finally, a nice little bit of comedy intruded with an ironic but funny street sign about halfway back to Halifax.  The street, by the way, is a closed loop that connects to Highway 333 at both ends.

 

 

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Well, dear readers, this concludes my Maritime adventures.  By the time you read this, I'm already back in Ontario.  It was a great trip.  I covered over 2400 kilometres in my trusty Kia Soul rental car, and took many hundreds of pictures, of which over 300 were worth saving.  I put myself outside of a whole series of memorable seafood meals, and didn't touch a slice of pizza since I left home (although I did think about it on occasion).  Hope you've enjoyed my travellers' tales.  If you have, please share the blog's address with your friends.  And remember, all these blog posts live here permanently.  Use the index of key terms to go back and look at my former travels, from European river cruises to Caribbean ocean cruises, from Hungary on the east to New Zealand on the west.

 

In closing, I want to say that this whole trip has been hugely therapeutic after a year and a half of Covid-19 lockdowns.  Getting out and travelling is only half of it.  Getting back in the saddle of photography and blogging, sharing where I've been and what I've learned with my readers, that's been just as important to my well-being.  Hope all of you stay safe and well until the next time I'm on here!

Maritime Expedition # 7: Saint John, Not St. John's!

The title stakes my turf right away.  Let's be completely clear: the biggest port city in New Brunswick is Saint John, and don't you DARE try to put an "s" on the end of it.  The capital of Newfoundland is St. John's, and don't even think of spelling the first word out in full.

 

This business of naming places after saints -- I tell ya!  It's just like what I ran into a while back on a Caribbean cruise, when I spent a day touring the island of St. John in the U. S. Virgin Islands and then sailed through the night to dock at the capital city of St. John's on the island of Antigua.  Aaack!  What we really need is for someone in the Roman Catholic Church to name every single one of the 11,000 Holy Virgins who were martyred along with St. Ursula, and then we can really have a different saint's name for every place that wants one all to itself!

 

Here in Canada, convention has long since fixed the names in these forms:  Saint John NB and St. John's NF.  Say what you mean, mean what you say (as my father liked to tell me).

 

My two night (or 48-hour) stay in Saint John turned into about 44 hours of fog and some sun each afternoon between 4:30 PM and 6:30 PM.  This made it more than a little difficult to make a clear visual record of the city.  Nevertheless, here are a few pictures.

 

The most famous tourist attraction of Saint John is the Reversing Falls.  Strictly speaking, more a set of rapids than a waterfall, but the gigantic tides of the Bay of Fundy are more than capable of making the Saint John River flow backwards at high tide.  Here are two pictures, the first at or near low tide one afternoon, and the second about half an hour after peak high tide the following (foggy) morning.  The change in the action and direction of the river around the big rock outcropping is unmistakable.

 

 

Most of downtown Saint John today is a Victorian city, a series of streets full of brick and stone buildings dating from some time in the 1800s.  As in Charlottetown, there are a few modern buildings aggressively altering the cityscape.  But in the main, the look remains Victorian -- inside as well as outside.  

 

 

 

It's super-easy to establish an olde-style British pub in Saint John, and there's a great selection of pubs of all kinds to prove it. 

 

Like many harbour cities (Halifax and St. John's to name a couple), Saint John slopes steeply uphill from the water's edge.  Take this into account when planning walking tours.  My hotel (the Delta Brunswick) was a scant two blocks walking uphill from the harbour but this, by my calculation, adds up to about 45-50 steps in a staircase.

 

Down at the water's edge, the Market Square brings together a row of Victorian warehouse buildings with an indoor shopping mall behind the historic façades, and a chain of great restaurants with eye-catching patios outside the south front of the complex. I had a magnificent salmon dinner at Grannan's, a classic steak and seafood restaurant which I fondly remember from my last visit in 16 years ago.

 

Outside the Market Square stands this odd-looking bit of public art.  I didn't see an explanatory sign or plaque but I'm guessing it's meant as a modern-day comic interpretation of the traditional "market cross" found in many old English towns.  

 

 

Now, look carefully at the corner where the glass atrium meets the brick of the original buildings, and you'll see a gent with his phone, tucked into the corner, doing his own comic riff on the sculpture -- except I'm willing to bet he was completely unaware of the resemblance.

The last leg of my trip took me from Saint John back to Halifax with two important stopping places along the way.  This was another single-day marathon that might better have been split into 2 parts.

 

The first leg took me northeast on Highway 1 towards Moncton.  This is a beautifully-built 4-lane freeway which swoops up and down the high hills of southern New Brunswick with insouciant ease.  At Sussex I met the first of two junctions with Highway 114.  I hung on for the second exit, another 13 kilometres east.  At this point, Highway 114 took me southeast towards the village of Alma.  After driving 20 kilometres, I came to the boundary of Fundy National Park.  As usual, there's a side pull-over lane with a ticket booth.  

Just past the ticket booth is Wolfe Lake, with a campground on one bank and a public picnic/swimming area for day visitors on the other side.  I was fascinated by the interplay of vegetation and water beside the beach.

A few kilometres farther into the park brought me to Bennett Lake, a reservoir contained by a sizable rock-faced dam (perhaps with an earthen interior).  I had a nice 25-minute walk here on two of the trails.  Again, there's a picnic and beach area, as well as some longer hiking trails leading to back-country camping places -- which must be reserved in advance.

 

 

On the beach, the park has adopted a noteworthy goose-control strategy.  It works because wild geese that have not yet become fully adapted to urban living do not like to be out of sight of their safety zone, the body of water.

 

You can see that it was a fairly windy day, both from the whitecaps on the lake and from the billowing of the goose screens.  

 

Behind the dam is the carcass of an old rusted spillway, long disused.  The modern dam includes a short, straight concrete spillway at the north end.  I wonder if this one could have been intended as a log chute?

 

As you continue southeast through the park, the road keeps rolling up and down hills, and on one crest I passed a sign indicating "363 m." as presumably the highest elevation on the road.  Not long after that, I saw "Slow Down" and "Steep Hill" warning signs, but none advising me to gear down. At the end of the first long descent, there's a curve to the left and a viewpoint that gives this view out over the Bay of Fundy.  I was obviously still a long way up, but definitely going to get all the way down in a hurry now.  Gearing down was essential.

 

The steep, straight grade below the lookout ended in a "45 km/h" sharp hairpin bend to the right.  Don't say I didn't warn you.  There follow a series of back and forth turns, and you'll be riding your brakes all the way if you didn't gear down.  

But then the road levels off, and there follow a whole series of turnoffs leading to the golf course, the visitor centre, and Point Wolfe Road.  Take that last one, and soon you'll see a road on the left marked "Swimming."  Fundy National Park has the last big outdoor swimming pool and change house built in a national park, and it's unusual to say the least.  The pool sits on a low bluff right beside the Bay of Fundy, and the bay's water is channelled into a pumping system to keep the pool's water level up, with the massive tides doing most of the work.  Obviously, then, a salt water pool, but a very refreshing stopover point if you're visiting the park on a hot summer day.  I'd have made time for it (I've done so a couple of times in the past) if it weren't closed for the season.  Sigh.  Here's an internet photo in the summer season.

A couple of kilometres farther along the Point Wolfe Road, there's a turn marked "Dickson Falls Trail."  Even if you don't want to walk the 1-kilometre trail, you should stop here for the viewpoint just off the parking lot.  It's as dramatic a seacoast view as I've ever seen anywhere.

 

If I'd gotten on the road earlier in the morning, I'd have kept going all the way to the end of the road, about 20 minutes farther along, where there's a beautiful wild beach along the mouth of a stream.  From the Dickson Falls Trail, I backtracked to the main road, and downhill past one or two more bends -- and suddenly, I was on the main street of Alma.  This lobster fishing village is also thoroughly conditioned by the tourist trade, with inns, restaurants, and shops, all right at the eastern gate of the park.

Highway 114 continues eastwards, mostly inland and away from the coast, through a series of farming landscapes and forested areas, until I reached the village of Hopewell Cape.  Keep alert here because you get only one brief warning sign, and then you're at the turnoff for Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park.  

The system here is very different from the National Park.  Parking is free, but then there is a per-person admission charge to the park.  As of 2021, this was $14.00 for adults and $12.00 for seniors and students, with kidlets at $8.00.  You should go as far along the road as possible before turning into the parking area, since the ticket office and entrance is at the very far end of the parking areas.  You'll also see a large sign announcing the high and low tide times for the day.  

Hopewell Rocks is perhaps the only place I've visited where "rush hour" happens at a different time every day.  That's because large numbers of people want the thrill of walking on the ocean floor at low tide, and the tide times keep shifting every day.  I arrived about an hour and half after high tide and the park was correspondingly not very busy.  I was able to park very close to the entrance.  Another four hours and it could have been a very different story.

The walking trails give access to several different viewpoints over different areas of rock formations.  This picture from the park's signboard shows what the entire dramatic stretch of coastline looks like in an aerial view.

 

 

The park runs golf carts on a reserved gravel roadway, to carry visitors who need or want assistance from the ticket office down to the most northerly set of formations.  I used it, again because of time shortage.  I had to pay $2.00 extra each way for this service, on top of the admission fee.

So here are my pictures to show what the rocks look like at about 3/4 of full tide.  I was able to walk down all the stairs except for the final flight down to the actual beach.  The last picture shows how the supporting structure for the stairs has been neatly fitted into a sizable crevice between one of the newer formations and the mainland.

 

From Hopewell, it takes about 40-45 minutes to drive to Moncton.  Since your admission is good for two consecutive days, this would be a good excuse to stay in Moncton, come out to the Rocks for high tide one day and for low tide the next day -- or something of that sort.  Tide times can be easily found online, and not just for this location.  I used this online site to pin down the tide times for the Reversing Falls at Saint John too.

 

 Bay of Fundy Tide Times

 

After I left Hopewell, I made a beeline for Halifax via Moncton and Truro, with only a brief Timmy break for a late lunch in Moncton.  I arrived in Halifax right on the mark of eight hours after I'd left Saint John, whereas the direct time by the fastest route is supposed to be under 4 hours.  A long, tiring day, then, but absolutely worth it.