Seven Seas Splendor - Canada & New England: New York to Montreal

Where this cruise calls, day by day

11 ports and 1 sea day over 11 Nights.

1. Day 1

   New York, NY

   United StatesDepart

   New York sails from two very different places. The Manhattan Cruise Terminal occupies Piers 88 and 90 off Twelfth Avenue in the West 50s, a 1930s finger-pier arrangement with rooftop parking and Midtown at the end of the block. Brooklyn's terminal in Red Hook is calmer and roomier but further from a subway. Either way the ship must clear the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which rules out the largest ships afloat.

   • The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, a ten-minute walk from the Manhattan piers
   • The High Line and Chelsea Market, with Hudson Yards on the way back
   • The sailaway itself - past the Statue of Liberty and under the Verrazzano; be on deck
   • Red Hook if you sail from Brooklyn: Louis Valentino Jr. Park has the best free Statue view in the city

   Getting ashore

   Manhattan berths at Piers 88 and 90 (West 46th to 54th Streets) with drop-off on Twelfth Avenue, while Brooklyn Cruise Terminal is in Red Hook; reckon 45-60 minutes from JFK or Newark and 30-45 from LaGuardia, all of it hostage to traffic.

   Best months

   May-Oct (Bermuda and Canada/New England runs; Sep-Oct adds foliage sailings)

2. Day 2 · At sea

3. Day 3

   Saint John

   CanadaPort

   Saint John sits on the Bay of Fundy, which has the largest tides in the world. Here the range is around eight metres, and twice a day the incoming tide physically shoves the Saint John River backwards through a rock gorge - the Reversing Falls Rapids, which only performs if you time your visit to the tide table. The city behind the pier is a weathered working port with a genuinely good 1876 market hall, and you can walk off into it.

   • The Reversing Falls Rapids from Fallsview Park - check the tide times before you go
   • Saint John City Market, the oldest continuously operating farmers' market in Canada
   • The sea caves and covered bridges at St. Martins, about 40 minutes out
   • Hopewell Rocks flowerpot formations, walkable on the sea floor at low tide but 90 minutes each way

   Getting ashore

   Docked at the Marco Polo Cruise Terminal on the downtown waterfront, with an enclosed pedway through to Market Square and the City Market.

   Best months

   Jun-Oct; Sep-Oct for fall colour

4. Day 4

   Halifax

   CanadaPort

   Halifax was the port that recovered the Titanic dead, and it has never entirely let go of them - 121 graves in Fairview Lawn, an unclaimed deckchair in the Maritime Museum. Ships tie up at the Seaport piers at the south end of a long boardwalk that walks you into downtown past Pier 21, where a million immigrants first set foot in Canada. It is an easy, self-guided port.

   • The Titanic graves at Fairview Lawn Cemetery, laid out in the curve of a hull
   • Maritime Museum of the Atlantic for the Titanic and Halifax Explosion galleries
   • Halifax Citadel National Historic Site and the noon gun
   • Peggy's Cove lighthouse and the granite barrens, about 45 minutes out

   Getting ashore

   Docked at the Halifax Seaport piers; the boardwalk runs from the gangway into downtown in 10-15 minutes.

   Best months

   Jun-Oct; late Sep-mid Oct for fall colour

5. Day 5

   Sydney

   CanadaPort

   Sydney is the way into Cape Breton rather than the reason for the day. The pier is marked by a giant fiddle sculpture on the boardwalk, and the town behind it has been quiet since the coal mines and the steel plant shut. Nearly everything worth the day is a drive away, so decide before you dock - unplanned, Sydney runs out in about an hour.

   • Fortress of Louisbourg, a reconstructed 18th-century French garrison town, about 45 minutes away
   • The Cabot Trail and Cape Breton Highlands National Park, a full-day loop
   • Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site at Baddeck, roughly an hour out
   • Cape Breton Miners' Museum in Glace Bay, with an underground tour led by former miners

   Getting ashore

   Docked at the Joan Harriss Cruise Pavilion on the Sydney boardwalk; the town is a short walk, but the sights all need a coach or taxi.

   Best months

   Sep-Oct (Cabot Trail fall colour); Jun-Oct season

6. Day 6

   Charlottetown

   CanadaPort

   Prince Edward Island runs a real tourism economy on a fictional orphan - Anne of Green Gables brings visitors, a great many of them Japanese, to the Cavendish farmhouse Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote from. Charlottetown itself is where Confederation was negotiated in 1864: small, red-brick, flat and walkable straight off the pier.

   • Green Gables Heritage Place at Cavendish, about 40 minutes across the island
   • Confederation Centre of the Arts, home of the long-running Anne stage musical
   • Victoria Row and the waterfront around Founders' Hall, both on foot from the ship
   • Red-sand beaches in PEI National Park and a church-hall lobster supper at New Glasgow or St. Ann's

   Getting ashore

   Docked at Port Charlottetown on the downtown waterfront; the historic centre is a five-minute walk, though Cavendish needs a tour or a taxi.

   Best months

   Jun-Oct; Sep for warm water and thinner crowds

7. Day 7

   Gaspe

   CanadaPort

   Gaspe is where Jacques Cartier came ashore in 1534 and planted a cross claiming the land for France, and the town has built its identity around that. It sits at the tip of the peninsula, with Forillon National Park half an hour away and Perce Rock about an hour down the coast. The town of roughly 15,000 is unremarkable; the coastline on either side of it is not.

   • Forillon National Park - the Cap-Gaspe lighthouse walk, seal haul-outs and the cliffs at Cap-Bon-Ami
   • Perce Rock and the northern gannet colony on Bonaventure Island, about an hour south
   • Musee de la Gaspesie and the Jacques Cartier monument above the bay
   • Site d'interpretation Micmac de Gespeg, run by the local Mi'gmaq community

   Getting ashore

   Accounts differ - some ships take the town wharf barely a kilometre from downtown, others anchor and tender to the welcome pavilion; Forillon and Perce need a coach either way.

   Best months

   Sep-Oct (fall colour); gannets on Bonaventure Jun-Aug

8. Day 8

   Baie-Comeau

   CanadaPort

   Baie-Comeau was built from nothing in the 1930s by the owner of the Chicago Tribune, who wanted his own newsprint supply, and it still runs on heavy industry - pulp and paper, an aluminium smelter, a grain elevator, and Hydro-Quebec's dams on the Manicouagan river behind it. The dams are the day out, but only the near one is realistic: Manic-2 is a short drive, Manic-5 is hours north up Route 389.

   • The Manic-2 generating station a short drive inland, which runs guided tours in summer
   • Jardin des Glaciers at the Centre Boreal, with a walk-through artificial glacier
   • Eglise Sainte-Amelie and its frescoes, in the walkable 1930s company-town quarter
   • Zodiac whale trips and sea kayaking off the St. Lawrence shore

   Getting ashore

   Docked at the berth beside the Matane ferry terminal, about 2km out - a 30-minute walk or the ship's shuttle, since local transit does not serve the pier and does not run Sundays.

   Best months

   Sep-Oct (fall colour); Jun-Oct season

9. Day 9

   Saguenay

   CanadaPort

   The cruise berth is the Quai de Bagotville in the La Baie borough, at the head of the Baie des Ha! Ha! - and reaching it means 54 nautical miles up the Saguenay fjord from the St. Lawrence, which is itself most of what you came for. Saguenay has won best-welcome awards four times over and puts entertainment on the dock for every arrival. Quebec City is a two-and-a-half hour drive away.

   • The fjord transit itself, past Cap Trinite and the Notre-Dame-du-Saguenay statue on the cliff
   • Musee du Fjord in La Baie, on the bay the ship berths in
   • La Pulperie de Chicoutimi, a ruined pulp mill turned regional museum
   • Zodiac and sea-kayak trips on the fjord, or the drive out to the abandoned company town at Val-Jalbert

   Getting ashore

   Docked at the Quai de Bagotville cruise terminal in La Baie, which has its own welcome pavilion; some ships instead anchor a few hundred metres off and tender.

   Best months

   Sep-Oct (fall colour); Jun-Oct season

10. Day 10

    Quebec City

    CanadaPort

    The berth at Pointe-a-Carcy sits directly under the old city, which makes this one of the easiest walk-off ports anywhere - you come out into the Lower Town and the funicular up to the Chateau Frontenac is two blocks away. Quebec is walled, French-speaking, steep and a UNESCO site in its entirety. Some St. Lawrence itineraries turn around here rather than just call.

    • Quartier Petit-Champlain and the funicular up to Dufferin Terrace and the Chateau Frontenac
    • The Plains of Abraham and the star-shaped Citadelle
    • Montmorency Falls, higher than Niagara, with a cable car and a bridge across the top
    • The farm road and cider houses of Ile d'Orleans

    Getting ashore

    Docked at the Port of Quebec terminal at Pointe-a-Carcy in the Old Port; Old Quebec begins at the gangway.

    Best months

    late Sep-mid Oct (fall colour); May-Oct season

11. Day 11

    Quebec City

    CanadaPort

    The berth at Pointe-a-Carcy sits directly under the old city, which makes this one of the easiest walk-off ports anywhere - you come out into the Lower Town and the funicular up to the Chateau Frontenac is two blocks away. Quebec is walled, French-speaking, steep and a UNESCO site in its entirety. Some St. Lawrence itineraries turn around here rather than just call.

    • Quartier Petit-Champlain and the funicular up to Dufferin Terrace and the Chateau Frontenac
    • The Plains of Abraham and the star-shaped Citadelle
    • Montmorency Falls, higher than Niagara, with a cable car and a bridge across the top
    • The farm road and cider houses of Ile d'Orleans

    Getting ashore

    Docked at the Port of Quebec terminal at Pointe-a-Carcy in the Old Port; Old Quebec begins at the gangway.

    Best months

    late Sep-mid Oct (fall colour); May-Oct season

12. Day 12

    Montreal

    CanadaArrive

    Montreal is usually a turnaround rather than a call - it is the upstream end of most St. Lawrence itineraries, since ships cannot pass the Seaway locks above it. The Grand Quay terminal at Alexandra Pier sits in Old Montreal with a public observation tower on its roof. What you get is a French-speaking city with a serious food culture and a compact old quarter.

    • Notre-Dame Basilica and the cobbled streets of Vieux-Montreal
    • The Mount Royal lookout, with the whole city and the river below it
    • Jean-Talon Market, and the Mile End bagel and smoked-meat institutions
    • The Underground City and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

    Getting ashore

    Docked at the Grand Quay (Alexandra Pier) in the Old Port; Old Montreal starts at the terminal door and the metro is a few blocks away.

    Best months

    late Sep-mid Oct (fall colour); May-Oct season