The official Quebec, Saguenay and Baie-Comeau cruise ports thread!

We are pulling away from Saguenay. What a welcome !! I loved the costumed welcoming committee. We didn’t try the blueberry pie (looked good though!!) but did try their juice. Such a warm start to our visit.

We took a boat tour through the fjord and the fall colors were just breathtaking. We also went inside the National Park to a couple of viewpoints. So gorgeous. Weather isn’t great (40’s and drizzle) but we didn’t care. The clouds made for great photos (hopefully) and we were dressed for it.

Another great day in Quebec!!
 
In 2003, there was a movie that was called "La Grande Seduction" (English version is called "Seducing Doctor Lewis"). The storyline is about a whole village --because they all lived on welfare and having a doctor on site would be the only way to attract factories-- working together to charm a doctor in hopes he would move in the village.

That movie is now a big part of our culture (definitely had an impact on our collective imagination) and the concept of doing great things together in order to please tourists on certain occasions stayed:

Quebec and Saguenay are trying to seduce Disney Cruise Line in hope they will bring more cruises in our province, so they are deploying "La Grande Séduction". ;)

Are you seduced? :hyper:
:welcome:
Is THAT what it was???

It was terrific!! If Disney goes back we'd love to return. Even without Disney we'd come back to Quebec!
 
In Saguenay we found Red Champagne at little shop near the boat. (The red cream soda Mevelandy mentioned in an earlier post.) My kids loved it! The four of us shared one bottle, then we bought 3 more and took them on board to dinner that night :drinking1. One of my kids' teachers told us about Cadbury Crunchie bars so we picked up a few of these, too. Add in a couple of beaver tails from Queues de Castor and blueberry chocolates MMMMMMM.
 
We are pulling away from Saguenay. What a welcome !! I loved the costumed welcoming committee. We didn’t try the blueberry pie (looked good though!!) but did try their juice. Such a warm start to our visit.

We took a boat tour through the fjord and the fall colors were just breathtaking. We also went inside the National Park to a couple of viewpoints. So gorgeous. Weather isn’t great (40’s and drizzle) but we didn’t care. The clouds made for great photos (hopefully) and we were dressed for it.

Another great day in Quebec!!
All this makes me want to go to Quebec now!
We are about 10 hrs away SW Ontario.. (where it was 86 again today) if I leave now I shall be there by mid morning;)
 


In Saguenay we found Red Champagne at little shop near the boat. (The red cream soda Mevelandy mentioned in an earlier post.) My kids loved it! The four of us shared one bottle, then we bought 3 more and took them on board to dinner that night :drinking1. One of my kids' teachers told us about Cadbury Crunchie bars so we picked up a few of these, too. Add in a couple of beaver tails from Queues de Castor and blueberry chocolates MMMMMMM.

Was Red Champagne my suggestion? (It's possible because it used to be my favorite when I was living in the area and I'm so obsessed with it that I even requested my Montreal local market to order some from Saguenay!) ...

So glad you liked our local treats! :)
 


On board the Carnival Sensation right now.

I like the ship much more than I thought I would. Very well maintained. I LOVE the layout.

Haven't seen our cabin yet but so far, very optimistic about this cruise.

Have a great cruise
 
Sitting at JFK waiting on our afternoon flight. Our wonderful cruise is over unfortunately. I truly want to thank @mevelandry for starting this thread as well as all of the kind folks that offered advice. It really was so helpful.

To pay it forward I’ll offer a brief summary of our experiences in port in the hope it helps someone else in the future. We were on NCL so our ports were somewhat different than those who sailed with Disney.

Quebec City - what a delightful city! Beautiful, clean and full of friendly people. We wandered around for a couple of days prior to our cruise just taking it all in. We also booked a private tour to Isle D’Orleans and Montmorency falls which was a ton of fun. Tour company was was Tours Voir Quebec.

Saguenay - NCL tour that included a boat tour of the fjord with a bus ride to a couple of viewpoints within the national park. Spectacular views of the fjord and foliage.

Charlottetown PEI - we booked a private tour of the island and had a wonderful day on the North Shore. The weather wasn’t great but our guide was terrific and we still had a great time. Lunch was fresh oysters and lobster rolls at Car’s Oysters. Just fabulous! Who could complain about that ??
Tour company was Rusty Rover Tours.

Sydney Nova Scotia - we took an independent small group tour of the Cabot Trail with a stop for lunch in Beddeck. This was amazing!! The scenery was incredible and this was by far the best fall colors of our trip. Tour company was Blackwood Tours.

Halifax Nova Scotia - we’d been here before so opted for a private tour of the Annapolis Valley to go wine tasting. This was a nice day but not as exciting as our last time there where we stuck to the coastal areas. Still, it was a nice change of pace. Tour company was Open Top Tours.

Saint John, New Brunswick. - we’d been here before as well so we booked an NCL tour with a professional photographer. This was just wonderful! She took us to several out of the way places that tourists don’t go to and offered advice for getting the best shots. We normally don’t do tours through a cruise line but NCL offers a lot of booking promotions and we ended up with $100 per port credit so we took advantage of it in three ports. After our tour we walked to the historic market for lunch.

Portland, Maine - We didn’t make any plans here. We’ve been there before so we just wandered around the town a bit doing some shopping. We had the most amazing lunch at Eventide. Get the brown butter lobster roll - you can thank me later ! :-)

Bar Harbor, Maine - We booked a private tour through Acadia National Park. This was spectacular. Everyone should see the view from Cadillac Mt at least once in their lifetime. Our guide also took us to a lot of little out of the way places. This was a great day. Tour company was At Your Service Taxi and Tours.

Boston - We took an NCL tour here. It was a culinary tour through the North End (Little Italy). This was so much fun! We had a great guide who took us to all of these little shops to sample their goodies. It was very educational as well as she took great time explaining how things should be used and what to look for when buying them. Lunch in the neighborhood was fantastic as well.

Wow! This is a long post, but then it’s been an action packed 2 weeks. No wonder I’m tired!! This was a wonderful trip in every way. Thanks again to everyone for your advice. It really helped when I was planning our adventure. I really hope this helps someone else traveling to this area. I’d encourage anyone considering traveling there to go ahead and take the plunge. We’re already plotting our return to many of these places.
 
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I'm hoping to keep this thread up in case DCL decides to bring back Quebec and Saguenay for 2020. :)

I agree! This is such a fun itinerary. I get that the travel is a bit cumbersome (seriously we could have driven from PA to Quebec City faster than it took to fly there - two flight delays which resulted in one missed flight didn't help, though), but it really is worth it. And our flight home today from NYC was a breeze. Doing this cruise one way allows you to spend more time in Quebec City which is definitely something you'll want to do anyway. I really hope Disney tries again. Maybe it they add some more ports it would sell better. We were on a twelve night cruise with only two sea days. There certainly wasn't as much down time as we've had on other cruises, but we saw so much and had so much fun.
 
I'm hoping to keep this thread up in case DCL decides to bring back Quebec and Saguenay for 2020. :)
Well, they brought back Vancouver-Hawaii and it sold out in a couple of days. Maybe they just need to offer it a different time of year. September has got to be the slowest time of the year for travel. I flew out in and out of MCO last month and MCO was a ghost town. I got through security at MCO in less then 5 minutles, and you know what a hot mess that airport is. Our flight from PHX to MCO was only half full. Lots of people had a row to themselves. I think it was a combination of a one way cruise and the time of year. Very similar to our Hawaii cruise in 2015.
 
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