Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.

All those people, and there were many, who said to me in the US, "Oh, New Zealand's on my bucket list, everyone says how beautiful it is. But it's such a long flight!" really should stop being so feeble. All they have to do is buy a ticket with Air New Zealand and head out of San Francisco on NZ7 at around 8.15pm. You settle into your seat (and if you're going Premium Economy in the 777, you get a fancy leather seat and proper leg room, as well as other niceties not available to those down the back), have dinner, watch a movie, go to sleep, wake up for breakfast, and you're there. How easy is that?

Even better, arriving early in the morning means you've got a whole day to distract yourself - even to do all your washing, dry it, and iron it and put it away - before going to bed at a reasonable hour, and sleeping almost normally. After all, 20 hours behind is the same as just 4 hours ahead: very easy to adjust to.

So the trip's over. It was a good one. There were frustrations and disappointments, naturally - things I couldn't do, less time than would have been ideal - but overall it went very well indeed. We were lucky with the weather, the fall foliage this year, the people we met, and are happy with our choices overall.

Here are the stats:
Countries - 2 (USA, Canada)
Languages spoken - 3 (English, French, American)
Planes - 4 (Air New Zealand, Air Canada, Virgin America)
Trains - 6 (Amtrak's Acela Express & California Zephyr, light rail in DC, Boston, Chicago)
Funiculars - 1 (Quebec)
Boats - 5 (New York water taxi cruise, ferry to Salem, Chicago river cruise, Gaspé Peninsula, lobster boat)
Ships - 1 (Silversea's Silver Whisper)
Helicopters - 1 (Manhattan flight-seeing)
Segways - 1 (Washington DC)
Horses - 1 (Joey, Gettysburg)
Taxis - many (drivers - DC's are most intellectual, SF's was obligingly speediest)
Buses and trolleys - many and various
Journeys - 2 (10 day cruise, Boston to Montreal, 2 day train trip, Chicago to SF)
Hotels - (2 Peninsulas, 3 Fairmonts, plus 2 others)
Beds slept in - 9 (best: Peninsula Chicago then Silver Whisper; worst: California Zephyr)
Wifi access - free in most hotels, finally!
Weight gained - 0kg (oh, yes)
Items lost - 2 (sponge, umbrella cover)
Items bought - 9 (shirt, tshirt, maple butter, maple caramel, apple butter, ice wine, ice cider, beer glass, shower curtain)
Public performances given - 2 (speech at Rhino March, Boston; impromptu Wolverine cosplay at Second City, Chicago)
Public performances watched - 7 (Second City improv, Silver Whisper cabaret, La Fabuleuse)
Number of pigs seen on stage - 1 (La Fabuleuse)
Trivial Pursuit games played - 5 (one 2nd, three 3rd, one won)
Baseball games attended - 1 (Washington Nationals v Miami Marlins)
Abraham Lincoln connections - multitudinous: stalking level
Museums visited - so many!
Dates learned - 2 (1863 Gettysburg, 1692 Salem)
Photos taken - 1,828 plus phone pics (approx. 30 with lens cap on)
Blog posts - 24 (but you knew that, having read every one, right?)

Chinese Whisper

This morning in the staff meeting, the teacher i/c international students announced a visitor next week from Qingdao. I quivered silently for a bit, but then I had to whisper to the woman next to me "I've been there!" She smiled, I have to say, thinly.

Well, what are the odds - it's a small (by Chinese standards) port in the Yellow Sea and I was only there in March. I scored a cruise with the OH and some Aussie journalists on the Silver Whisper, a Silversea small ship, from Hong Kong to Shanghai via several ports plus a night in Beijing. At the Peninsula Hotel there. Which would have been impressive, had we not by then already spent two nights at the original Pen in Hong Kong, where we had a 6-room suite in the tower. Six rooms. With a hallway. Ankle-deep oriental rugs, quantities of televisions (including over the bath) and a telescope. And our luggage in the dressing room, spirited there, we scarcely having seen it since checking in at Auckland. We were met off Cathay Pacific's Business class at the airbridge, people! Then we were wafted through all the tedious airport stuff and conveyed to the hotel in a Roller.

That was the plebian version of arrival, however: the real celebs helicopter onto the roof and disappear into the penthouse suite and it's as if they're not even there.

Different story on the Silver Whisper - everyone knew who we were and used our names from the get-go. Necessarily more compact there, but also very luxurious - bottomless champagne in the free minibar, imagine that - and a great contrast to much of what we saw, a lot of it involving wheelbarrows and bamboo besoms. Qingdao was our last port of call before sliding up the river into the heart of Shanghai on the last morning.

>>> ...A day’s sail south brings the temperature up again and when we dock at Qingdao I’m not shocked to see brides with bare shoulders posing for photos in front of St Michael’s Catholic Church, though when they gather up their skirts to leave, I’m equally unsurprised to see they’re sensibly wearing striped football socks underneath. Draped over a hill, this is a lovely town with a strong German influence, and when I wander through the lanes I could be in Bavaria — until, that is, I pass the hospital where brightly-coloured plastic bedpans are piled up next to buckets of flowers at a stall by the entrance. I visit a cavernous mansion and look at the Spartan bed where Mao slept, sniff the incense at a gaudy temple with fierce statues and a stuffed cat in a basket, duck under washing strung across the footpath and am thankful that it’s two o’clock and not noon when I discover that it’s a clock-tower I’ve just climbed at the Lutheran church.

The people are friendly here, and I receive many greetings, including “Hello, foreigner!” from a party of schoolchildren. They’re chattering excitedly over their day at the seaside: the beach is swarming with people sieving rock pools with tea-strainers, sunbathing on the yellow sand, collecting seaweed and shells. I walk along the pier that stretches out into the bay, past stalls, photographers and magicians, to the pavilion at the end. I can see a pagoda, a cathedral, a communications tower, some skyscrapers, and lots and lots of people. I can see China.

[Unpub.]

Silver Shadow

Yeah, well, sorry about that. I had fine intentions of taking a photo of my food today because I knew it would be beautifully presented, but lunchtime wine has frequently been my downfall and today was no exception. So you'll just have to imagine a creamy yellow pyramid of mango jelly in a pool of finely-cut salsa of mango, kiwifruit and strawberry, and a piped dollop of coconut cream on top with a, hmm, credit card of dark chocolate inserted into it. Look, there's still half the chocolate left - just build on that. Use your imagination, dammit. It followed deliciously intensely-flavoured chicken soup and super-tender beef with Yorkshire pud.

I was on board the Silversea ship Silver Shadow, sister to Silver Whisper on which I sailed a couple of years ago from Hong Kong to Shanghai. It's a small ship, just the 382 suites, and both classy and friendly, and we had a ball. I loved that everything was included, tips, drinks, excursions and all (not that, ahem, I was paying) and that the staff had learned our names within the first 24 hours, and used them. Super comfortable, elegant, and such fabulous food at the 6 or so restaurants that it was a mercy we were only on board for a week or so.

This one is in Auckland before heading south to Cook Strait and then across the Tasman - which takes an astonishing 3 days - to Sydney and then along the south coast to Melbourne, Adelaide, Port Lincoln, Albany and Fremantle (tick, tick, tick, tick, tick and tick). Then it's up through Indonesia and away to more exotic destinations. The six Silversea ships are constantly circling the world on the most mouth-watering itineraries, including, since they're conveniently small, the Inside Passage to Alaska, which I would dearly love to sail along one day to see the bears and the salmon and the glaciers. And to go there on a Silversea ship would be best of all.

Costa packet, probably

My goodness, that scurrilous Schettino, captain of the liner Costa Concordia, is such a cliché Italian coward that he's single-handedly revived all those old wartime jokes like the Italian flag being a white cross on a white background, and Italian tanks having four reverse gears and one forward in case of attack from behind. So thank goodness for the doughty coastguard captain Gregorio De Falco, ripping into him in such a robust fashion: the man's a hero, and more than cancels Schettino out.

From the details that are emerging of the organisation of the ship, and even its design, Italian cruisers are going to struggle to recover from such bad publicity - but the one I've travelled on, the Silversea ship Silver Whisper, was excellent. Small but perfectly-formed, it carried only 382 passengers, so it was nothing like the vast white bricks - like the Concordia and worse - that seem to be the trend these days, where you could spend a week without sighting the sea. We got on in Hong Kong, a splendid port to sail from, and were cosseted and pampered for the following week until we left the ship, reluctantly, in Shanghai - also an impressive port to sail into, which we could, being so svelte, right into the centre past all those extraordinary buildings.

The captain was Italian, not that we saw much of him, but the cruise director, whom we did, was too, and had such a comically thick accent that the Trivial Pursuit afternoons were especially challenging as we struggled not just to think of the answers, but to decipher the questions in the first place.To hear him mangle Don Quixote into 'donkey shoty' was to be totally flummoxed. But it was all good fun, and the ship was so friendly and luxurious, and the food so good, and the complimentary wine bottomless, and the bed so superbly comfortable, I would happily cruise nel modo italiano again - as long as it was with Silversea. So how pleasing that in a couple of weeks I'll be having lunch on board a sister ship, Silver Shadow, when it visits Auckland. And what a bummer, that directly afterwards I'll have to disembark again.

Silver's gold

Today I broke free from the sofa to get a typhoid jab at the Travel Clinic, which was remarkably full of jeans-wearing Baby Boomers studiously equipping their medical kits before heading off overseas on all sorts of adventures; and where the doctor, who has perfected the art of both reading and - more unusually - writing upside down so his patients across the desk can follow his annotations to the Clinic's rather daunting list of vaccinations, scrolled through his email inbox to show me how many people had been in touch with him recently having been bitten - by dogs, mainly, but also by monkeys. "And one man wasn't even a tourist!" he said, clearly thinking this was a dirty trick by the dog in question. "He was there on business!" But it's too late for me to get vaccinated against rabies, so I'll just have to spend my time in Viet Nam whirling like a ninja, fending off all the rabid mammals.

Then I collected our family photos from the North & South office, where they've been scanned ready to be laid out for the November issue with my Stalag Luft 3 story, which I'm really looking forward to seeing. We chose November because of Remembrance Day then, which was never much of a thing for most of my life, but has now become a minor Anzac Day here in New Zealand, with poppies and all. Interesting how the further away we get from the War, the bigger it has become: I wonder if the Vietnam War will ever stop skulking around at the back? And then I picked up my passport with its Vietnam visa, the first entry in its pristine pages.

Finally I trotted off to the the O'Connell Street Bistro for a very nice lunch indeed, thank you, hosted by Silversea and thoroughly enjoyed by a roomful of editors, and me. It was Silversea standard dining, which is high praise, because Silversea is the best type of ocean cruising you can do. Small ships - well, small enough to fit under Tower Bridge, but not so small that it feels at all cramped, and certainly not in the suites, which have walk-in wardrobes, a seating area and marble bathroom as well as the big bed - with around 300 guests. Compared with the massive, ugly cities that they're building these days, the Silversea ships are canoes. Canoes with personal butlers, bottomless champagne in the rooms, waiters carrying your breakfast buffet selection to your table for you... it goes on. The week I spent on Silver Whisper, from Hong Kong to Shanghai by way of Beijing's port, was pretty much the definition of sybaritic - with class. Happy to repeat anytime, Silversea!

Nameless, like the novel. You know the one.

Halifax! It’s been a long time coming. And, in the nature of life, it didn’t quite work out as I would have preferred; but there you go, you have to roll with the punches.

Halifax has loomed unexpectedly large for me simply because I kept having Titanic connections: coming across a travelling expedition, complete with iceberg, in Copenhagen; visiting Cork harbour in Ireland; and others that would make this claim stronger except that I can’t recall them at the moment thanks to a rather large port I’ve just seen off, from the private cabinet in our suite here on Silversea’s Silver Whisper (on arrival, your butler asks for your preferences in stocking the minibar – which is INCLUDED). Anyway, Halifax in Nova Scotia is the nearest port to the sinking, and lots of boats went out from here to rescue survivors, but of course came back with only bodies.

I didn’t get to the cemeteries that I’ve written about several times; but I did visit the Maritime Museum, which is very good, and which has a Titanic section that includes a new concept for me: wreckwood, that is, items made from wood salvaged from the ship. It seemed a bit trivial to make a rolling pin and a backgammon board from bits of the Titanic, but who am I to judge?

There was [all together now] not enough time to give the museum its due because I was booked on a coach tour out to Peggy’s Cove an hour’s drive away, sucked in because of another small obsession, with lighthouses. 

Although the weather deteriorated into rain, it was still pretty and striking, and I was glad that I’d gone. The bare granite rocks where the lighthouse stands were initially swarming with coachloads of tourists, but the rain drove them off in the end, and I was able to enjoy it uncluttered. It was all very  - you know, that book, by that writer, woman, I think there was a movie with thingummy, so well known, Usual Suspects,  you know. Damn that ruby port!

Mists, mellow fruitfulness, Massachusetts and more...

Definitely autumn today, with drifts of leaves on the deck, a sudden downpour of real rain and blackbirds flailing about in an ungainly manner on a bush covered with bright red berries. The cat has moved into my bed at night now and, in the absence of sun through the window onto her favourite spot during the day, has relocated to sitting at the left thigh of me the mother, which has the added advantage of placing her ears in the warm blast of air from the laptop fan.

The photo was taken one October in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, where Vs of geese were winging south, their honking surprisingly musical. Most of my trips to the US have been taken at that time of year, when everything's looking mellow, there are pumpkins everywhere, and the trees are - in New England especially, of course - brilliantly coloured in the low sun. It's no penance that the temperatures are cooler and sometimes it's cloudy; it's not as though I'm an English office-worker escaping for my annual holidays to get a blast of sunshine on my pale skin and top up last year's melanomas. Coming from somewhere that has, usually (and spectacularly so this year) reliable summer weather, it's quite liberating not to be reliant on good weather when I travel.

But this year I'm heading back to the States and Canada in June, so - summer! Except that the state this time is Alaska, and it's a cruise beginning right up in Seward, and there'll be glaciers. And in Canada it'll be the Rockies, with more glaciers. Layers: that's what it's going to be all about. Anyone who's ever been on a Silversea cruise has had that drummed into them; and this is going to be another one with them, a glorious compensation for having to turn down the offer of a little flit on the Silver Whisper from Wellington to Auckland earlier this year, because I was going to Gore.

But going to Gore got me offered a second trip to Southland, and the Hump Ridge Track which I've written two stories about today; and other lovely places down there. And I'm going to Wellington on Wednesday anyway, to take the train back, an offer that came about on a trip to Hobbiton, and I've referenced hobbits today. It's so satisfying when everything links together like this!

In-gene-ious

Here's a first: this week's NZ Herald Travel containing my (cut) Easter Island story on page 5 - and then, on page 10-11, the Firstborn's account of her junket last year to China. Yes, yes, she has stories in the main paper all the time, and frequently on the front page, but that's what she was trained for. It takes a different set of skills to write as entertainingly and informatively as this about a destination, and that's why I'm unfairly claiming some DNA-based credit for her story about channelling her inner shopper in Shanghai.

I have been to the city myself, but only for half a day at the end of our cruise with Silversea up the coast from Hong Kong, so the visit was tinged a little with regret at leaving behind the friendly luxury of the Silver Whisper. It was also shortly before the city hosted the World Expo, and it was full of road diversions, bamboo scaffolding and the smell of wet cement as it raced to get ready. Even so, it was an astonishing place, especially to arrive at along the river one murky morning, under elegant suspension bridges and past all those bizarre skyscrapers on the Pudong side (so many of them now, and so heavy, that apparently the ground is cracking under the weight - which hasn't stopped construction on the Shanghai Tower, to be the second-tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa).

We just had a quick look around and visited some character buildings, and then caught the Maglev train out to the airport. That's as in 'magnetically levitated' off the rails so there's no friction slowing it down. We waited for the boring 300kmh train to go so that we could catch the fast one, that went 434kmh at its fastest - so fast that by the time I got my camera trained (ha!) on the indicator, it had already started slowing down again. It was super-smooth, quiet, really tilted on the corners, and got us to the airport in just 7 minutes. Shame the flight home couldn't have been equally quick.

Auckland celebrates

Today is Anniversary Day for Auckland, when we get to be on holiday again while the rest of the country is at work on a Monday. That would be good enough on its own, but on top of that it's been a beautiful day, and there was so much to do in the city that really everyone was spoiled for choice: Laneway festival for the indie crowd, regatta for the yachties, seafood festival for the foodies, dragon boating for the best-buns brigade, and, for me, the buskers festival. Well, they call it a festival, but it's a pale imitation of the real thing down in Christchurch, where it's truly the World Buskers Festival and people come from all over to take part. It's brilliant.

Auckland just gets a few people afterwards, and to be frank at first I was thinking that this year we'd got the dregs: guy from Venice Beach doing a poor moon walk in an MJ mask and a rather better robot dance, a couple of Italians juggling, a Mexican done up in cling film... all a bit ho-hum, I thought, and was easily distracted by the sight of the dear old Silver Whisper in port, so familiar yet hurtfully out of bounds now (once you've made your home on a Silversea ship, it's hard not to feel they'd welcome you back on board any time). Then there was the new sandy 'beach' set up in Viaduct Harbour with its sun umbrellas and loungers, the siren call of the cronut, and all those people to watch.

But I got sucked back to the buskers, and the last lot were much better: Scooby Circus who was a personable young man from Perth who mainly juggled but had good patter; then Diogo Alvares, a super-cool dude from Brazil who did brilliant magic with cards, rings and ping pong balls and finally pulled off a strait-jacket escape, writhing and wriggling while still managing to look cool, and last of all Funny Bones, a duo from Manchester/Tokyo who did slapstick, mime and juggling and were really funny and original, especially with their 5-metre high creepy kazoo-voiced puppets.

What was also pleasing was how much more in the groove the audience is now, compared with how inhibited they used to be when the festival first started years ago: they cheer and whoop and clap almost like Americans, and when roped in as volunteers are happy to make fools of themselves. I was proud.

Also, proud of local girl Lorde today, from Devonport just across the harbour, who won two Grammys. Excellent!

Breakfasting like royalty - sometimes

There was no milk for breakfast this morning. I'm happy to say that this doesn't often happen in our house - but that does then mean that it's even more ruinous to the morning routine. The First-Born kindly went to the dairy when it opened and brought some back, but by then the pattern was shattered and the day already dislocated.

Breakfast to me is tea and cereal, currently porridge, both with lots of milk. To do without it was to re-live some of the worst breakfasts I've eaten, most notably in Peru.

In our three-star experience there, breakfast was invariable: a saucer with one dry-scrambled egg on it, some slices of tomato, a sliver or two of avocado if we were lucky, and a stale bread roll with jam washed down with a cup of coca tea (or feeble coffee). Every morning, the same. It's just as well the country itself is so colourful and fascinating, because those breakfasts were nothing to get out of bed for.

Joana, our local guide, was inured to it, but Chuck from St Louis found it a tough row to hoe. I think his experience with saucers was previously non-existent, particularly when used as a main course plate. It was a (heartlessly) comical sight to see his disappointment at this restaurant where we had brunch after an early start, when he ordered eggs and bacon and got the usual saucer of hackingly dry scramble with some diced ham sprinkled sparingly over the top. It drove him to drink, hence his frothy pisco sour at 11 o'clock in the morning. He didn't like that either. Bless him, he tried to stay cheerful, but he went home half the man he was when he arrived. (He did look the better for it though.)

I've had other horrible breakfasts - the hard-boiled eggs and Fanta in a Moscow hotel are still memorable after 30 years - but there have been excellent ones too, even just this year. Duck hash at Hapuku Lodge in Kaikoura was inspired and delicious; and having the waiter on the Silversea ship Silver Whisper trail behind me back to the table carrying my choice from the buffet was a novelty - but best of all was at Indigo Pearl Resort on Phuket, Thailand.

The resort's decor is industrial chic - iron, concrete and bolts combined with super-fine sheets, silk throws and richly polished wood - which was a nice change from the usual bamboo. The restaurant kept the theme going with cutlery like spanners and so on, but it was the food that blew us away, especially the breakfast buffet. Every sort of tropical fruit, juice, cereal, pastry and bread, a toaster (yay!) and friendly staff standing behind little stalls just waiting to whip up our choice of eggs, or waffles, or crepes, or noodles, fried rice or congee... And tables outside under palm trees with manicured gardens full of bright waxy scented flowers, peaceful fountains and immaculate lawns. Now that's the way to start a day.

Fabulous!

What a lovely day today! To begin with, it was a calm, brilliantly sunny morning, and we woke to cliffs and hills of gold and green both sides as we sailed up the Saguenay River. There was some mild excitement when we reached a 10m statue of Notre Dame de Saguenay on a 100m cliff above the water, erected in gratitude for someone’s miraculous survival in the river; but the real thrill was to come in the town of Saguenay at the head of the fjord.

It was a slow approach with plenty of time for lazing in the sun on a lounger by the pool under a pretty unnecessary rug; and the docking was such a masterly and low-key affair that even hanging over the bridge watching the captain ease the Silver Whisper alongside the pier was almost dull, once we’d got over how miniscule his joystick was. Ahem.

So it was just as well that, despite its being Thanksgiving today, the town was there to watch and welcome our arrival (even though we’d been pipped into the harbour by Celebrity’s Summit) and the pier was busy with unicyclists, jugglers and costumed stilt artists. Saguenay is, unsurprisingly, famous for its welcome.

More than that though, and despite its being a particularly pretty town of cute little mansard-roofed houses, neat gardens and sandy beach, it’s famous for the show it puts on telling the history of the town and of Quebec province. It’s called ‘La Fabuleuse’, it runs for 90 minutes, stars upwards of 100 of the townspeople on stage in 1000 roles from little children to old people, and is quite the most extraordinary stage performance I’ve ever seen.

Here are some of its elements, on the indoor stage of what must surely be a purpose-built arena: Indians, French aristocrats, colonists, cantering horses, a pig, a flock of geese, a cow and a goat, cannon fire, bombs, abseiling soldiers, two cars and a jeep, a tank, a boat, flames and a man on fire, fighting, dancing, tumbling and singing. Oh, and a flood. I’ve never seen anything like it. Hugely entertaining and impressive, particularly since it’s performed by volunteers, and has been going for 27 years.

All this, plus scenery and poutine! Completely worth the day’s detour along the river.

Sailing

Unlike what seems these days to be the rest of the population of the western world, I've only been on two cruises - oh, hang on, three: I was forgetting the fancy catamaran up the Gordon River in Tasmania for a couple of nights. But that's in another class entirely from what most people think of as a cruise these days - and so was my first time really, on a small ship through a few of the Fiji Islands, which was pleasant and comfortable, but, you know, small.

Cruise ships are getting bigger and bigger: 'floating cities' may be a cliche of ad-speak, but it's also totally accurate. And they're already past the point where the destinations are the main focus - really, they could just be moored in some immense swimming pool and most of the passengers would be so caught up in the eating and shopping and entertainment on board that they wouldn't even notice. The latest Disney cruise ship has virtual portholes in the inner suites that are more in demand than those with real views over the real sea, because these ones come with interactive Nemos.

I'm thinking about cruising because my sister's just returned from 10 days in the Pacific with P&O, with what I think are horror stories: a punch-up in the guest laundry over a dryer, with one woman laid out cold; someone stealing an evening gown, wearing it, and challenging the gobsmacked rightful owner to prove it was hers; a family off-loaded in Port Vila after a noisy domestic; teenage lads ditto after tomfoolery in the life-boats and giving the captain an earful. Plus obese passengers super-loading plates at the buffet; and having to miss a port because the swell was a bit too big to risk these top-heavy passengers transferring into the launches. Sounds like hell to me. (And P&O is still struggling to shake off that murder on board a few years ago.)

I've been on board the Cunard liners - not, alas for a cruise, but for a tour and a fancy lunch, and they are very classy, if slightly absurd (waiters with white gloves - how impractical!) Even the new ones, like the Queen Mary, are designed to have an aura of mid-20th century elegance and exclusivity that hopefully discourages inelegant behaviour amongst the guests. (Probably most of them are too old to do more than clash Zimmer frames anyway.) The ships are certainly beautiful to look at, inside and especially out, with those classically raked bows - nothing like the glaring white bricks of the modern jobs.

The only proper cruise I've been on was on Silversea's Silver Whisper, a small ship (maximum 380 passengers, and it was only 2/3 full) and even though I'm still not a convert to cruising per se (too much about the journey, not enough destination, so not very productive for stories - also, very fattening), this was a great experience. Again, there were absurdities - ranks of waiters hovering to seize our filled plates from us at the breakfast buffet to carry for us to our tables, the whole dining room seething with these mini-parades - but besides being very luxurious, it was friendly too. And the bed! Twelve centimetres of pillow-top plus gentle rocking from the ship = best sleeps ever.

Perhaps though what made it seem so very welcoming and comfortable was that the cruise was along the coast of China, and the ports we called at delivered such an overwhelming dose of foreignness that it was a huge relief to return each time to familiar surroundings and cheerful staff who knew our names.

UPDATE: At the risk of discrediting this whole post, I've just remembered the fabulous cruise I went on through the Galapagos Islands - but again, it was a small ship, and it was all about the destination, rather than the on-board facilities (which were great).

But at least I learned that KFC in French is PFK...

To be fair, if you come to a small city in the middle of a long weekend, on the Sunday, at the end of the tourist season, you shouldn’t really be disappointed that there’s not much going on. It sure was pretty quiet today on the streets of Sept-Iles, on the northern side of the St Lawrence Seaway, even though it was a beautiful sunny day. Cold, though, I thought – but since it has got as low as -42 degrees here (as guide Rod said, in his curiously Fargo-esque accent, “doesn’t matter whether that’s Celsius or Fahrenheit, hey”) then I imagine the locals were finding +7 pretty balmy.

Certainly, on my long, long walk around the town today – five miles, altogether, is the informed estimate – I did notice some houses with their front doors wide open to what felt to me like a bitter wind; and the greetings I got were all bright and cheery as I stumped along with my hands thrust deep into my jacket pockets. Hardy souls – you’d need to be, in a place where the harbour freezes over, and the first snow isn’t far away now. But it seems that’s exactly what they are here, outdoorsy and active, and life in Sept-Iles is all about getting out there, hiking, canoeing, snow-shoeing and hunting.

Animals are fair game, literally, but they are a lot more protective of their children, to judge by this startlingly gruesome sign. I saw it after walking through the Reservation part of town, where the Innu people live in small, plain houses and their kids and dogs roam the streets, enjoying their freedom.

It was good, finally, to get back to the Silver Whisper’s warmth and comfort after hours tramping the streets and not finding much there of interest – to be fair, the reconstructed Trading Post was well presented and interesting, and the Innu museum closed, and the waterfront was pretty and neat – to afternoon tea with a tea menu, tiered cake-stand and scones, a cheery game of Trivial Pursuit, and a red sunset behind a headland with a lonely house and a lighthouse.