2025 London and TA Day 19: Cruise Day 13 - Sydney, Nova Scotia

Cruise Compass
Dinner Menu: A Taste of the USA
Today’s Weather
Location at Start of Day
View From the Port Webcam
Location at End of Day

I dragged my heels until May 2025 when it came to seriously looking at Sydney and Halifax options. I knew that the pure sightseeing options (“let’s take a drive on the Cabot Trail”) probably weren’t our thing, nor did I think we’d want to make big bus trips to see cultural re-enactment attractions – but there wasn’t a ton of stuff to do right at the port, either. In the end, we decided that the next day at Halifax was going to offer enough self-tour options to potentially make for a busy day and we’d simply wander around the waterfront area at Halifax, likely combining geocaching with other local attractions. We DID consider a trip over to Fort Louisbourg to have hot chocolate and see some re-enactment stuff, but the $62 per person price tag – CHEAP, as shore excursions go – kind of put us off.

We spent about 3 hours onshore, following (this time successfully) a Geocaching Adventure while also trying to find (unsuccessfully) a couple of traditional caches. Fortunately, a picture of The Big Fiddle outside the cruise terminal allowed me to log a Virtual Cache, so got a Sydney cache.

The Big Fiddle.  Wherever did this name come from?  :-)

Hey - I know those people!

A view of the two ships in port, through the fog.  Brilliance is the back ship in this photo.

Fun mural on the side of a brewery

We checked out the Arts & Craps market at the terminal hoping to find a suitable Christmas ornament but didn’t like the choices. We figure we can find something tomorrow in Halifax.

In the Schooner, Jose, one of the waiters, knew our drink order by this time and we chatted with him for a while. He confirmed that they’d changed the OJ. It is apparently mixed directly at the bar gun now (severely diluting it) rather than being poured from a premixed jug.

James is MIA from the MDR again.

At 8P they had a (somewhat gratuitous) moment of silence across the ship to commemorate 9/11/2001.

The Headliner tonight is a 3-tenor rock vocal group called REBEL. All were former Broadway performers. They do pieces from the 60s-90s. They were OK, but I’m guessing they were more interesting pre-Covid, when they numbered five guys. We still enjoyed the performance, however.