Tammie pulled out her phone to take notes, and I had a tablet when we sat down across from each other in the living room. My daughter stated, “Let’s get this all figured out tonight, because shore excursions filled up really fast before our last cruise.” I did remember. There had been some excursions that were fully booked by the time we looked at what we wanted to do!

I also remembered that we had managed to schedule shore excursions at each port of call. The things we saw and did were fun, but when our ship pulled out of dock, I wished that Tammie and I would have had time to visit the town built around the port. Also, the cost of all those shore excursions had doubled the cost of my cruise.

That night, Tammie and I agreed that the only excursion we really wanted to go on was the one that would show us where the story about Anne of Green Gables took place.

Three months before taking this cruise, I had had my right hip replaced. Walking suddenly felt good again. While aboard ship, I surprised myself by walking a few laps around the promenade deck with my daughter, Niki. Although walking was painless, I was out of shape. Our first port of call on Sunday morning was Portland, Maine. Tammie said, “The church where we will attend Mass is just a few blocks from the dock.” What I failed to remember or maybe didn’t realize was that the distance was all uphill! I wasn’t used to that type of energetic walking.

We stopped often and rested along the way. When we arrived at the church, we were told, “Because today is Corpus Christi, Mass will take place at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.” He pointed uphill and said, “It’s just a block or two up that street.”

In Halifax, we bought tickets for a Hop-On, Hop-Off bus. This line of ancient, double-decker buses had a set route through the city, stopping at several places of interest. By the time we finished going through the Halifax maritime museum, we only waited five minutes for another bus to roll up.

We visited Saint Mary’s Cathedral Basilica next, where I saw the most beautiful stained-glass windows that I have ever seen. The scenes on the top half of the windows were from the New Testament, and the one below it was from the Old Testament. Wondrously, they all corresponded to each other.

Before our next stop, I spotted pink blossoms on huge rhododendron bushes. The Halifax Public Gardens wasn’t far from the shopping district. It was established in 1867, the same year as the Canadian Confederation. There were 16 acres of lawns and flowerbeds behind its ornate wrought-iron gates. At one time a part of the garden was swampy but determined gardeners turned it into a beautiful city oasis.

At our port of call in Sydney, we walked uphill to visit what had once been Saint Patrick’s, the oldest Catholic church in the area. After touring a house kept as it had been in the 1800’s, we found a cider house to quench our thirst. On our way back to the ship, we came across a food truck selling poutine and beaver tails. Since we’d already tried poutine, we ordered a beaver tail. It reminded me of a long, narrow elephant ear from the fair. We had ours frosted with Nutella.

Our port of call in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island was longer than when we docked in Halifax and Sydney. We had the entire day before we had to return to the ship. That was good, because the Anne of Green Gables tour lasted five hours. When we debarked, there was a huge building for us to walk through to get to our tour bus. The building was filled with shops selling everything that could possibly interest a tourist: jewelry, pottery, printed tee shirts, books, and puzzles.

Conveniently, our tour bus wasn’t scheduled to leave immediately, which gave everyone time to buy things. This tour was popular, so the bus was full. Our tour guide told us that the first half of the tour would focus on L.M. Montgomery, the author of the book Anne of Green Gables. She was a native of Prince Edward Island. (PEI) The second half would be about the setting she chose for many of her stories.

As our bus rolled through the countryside, we enjoyed seeing the beautiful gently rolling fields along the road. The green foliage in some fields contrasted beautifully with the amazing red soil in freshly plowed fields. The port in Charlottetown is on the south end of the island, and the story of Green Gables took place on the north side of the island. We had plenty of time to see and admire a generous portion of PEI.

What charmed me the most about the tour was that the location and houses in the story were not fictional. We saw the same pond that Anne Shirley called the “lake of shining waters” and walked through the green-gabled house that became a home for the endearing orphan, Anne Shirley. Despite the number of visitors who visit the place, it retained its quiet, countryside charm.

I enjoy going on tour-guided shore excursions but find exploring on our own was also very much fun. But then, I think most people will agree with me when I say, whenever you go on a vacation, it’s all fun!