Cruise day 5 – New England & Canada on NCL – Halifax, Nova Scotia port call

Today’s BearCruise group’s schedule of activities

Thursday, October 2 – Halifax, Nova Scotia

Happy Birthday to Mike Cleary!!!

9:15 am – 6 pm – In port in Halifax.

9:30 am – 5:30 pm – BearCruise NE – Private Peggy’s Cove, Hall’s Harbor & Wine Country. Follow the meeting instructions on your voucher from Compass Tours.

10 am – 2:30 pm – BearCruise NE – Private Peggy’s Cove & Titanic Heritage Tour. Follow the meeting instructions on your voucher from Compass Tours.

4 pm – Pool / Hot Tub Takeover. If you are back on board, join other BearCruisers on Deck 15 midship at one of the pools or hot tubs.

6:00 pm – Cocktail Hour, Mixx, Deck 6, aft.

Dinner – Taste and Savor on Deck 6 aft and The Manhattan Room on Deck 7 aft.

After Dinner – Ship shows and activities – see today’s NCL’s daily program, the Freestyle Daily, below.

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Today’s NCL cruise’s schedule of activities

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Sunrise during our sail into Halifax.

I don’t know if you know what an upside pineapple signifies, but it’s fairly well known on cruise ships:

but you might remember that Bob wore a shirt with pineapples (some upside down) on it yesterday, and this morning we cracked up finding that someone had stuck this magnet to our cabin door.

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Pre-trip correspondence with the centre

We didn’t do any of the excursions offered in this port. Instead, we rented a car and drove two hours to the Anne Murray Centre at 36 Main Street in Springhill, Nova Scotia. Bob is a life-long Anne Murray fan and has always wanted to visit the centre, and being so close, we took advantage of the situation.

Back on April 11, 2025, after seeing on the Anne Murray Centre’s website that they’re closing this season on September 30, I filled out their “Contact us” form with this message:

We (2 of us) are interested in visiting the centre on Thursday, Oct 2, 2025 at around noon. This will be on a cruise ship port call in Halifax from 9:30 a.m. – 6 p.m.

We’re planning to rent a car at the port as soon as we get off the ship, drive to the centre, spend an hour or 2 there, and then drive back in time for the ship’s 6 p.m. departure.

My questions:
1) Does this seem doable to you?
2) Do the tickets have a time of day associated with them? (i.e., for Oct 3, 2025 at noon?)
3) When would be the earliest we would be able to purchase tickets?

Thanks for any help!

and to our surprise and delight, Wanita Shay, the Executive Director, responded:

Hello John,

Thanks so much for your message and interest in visiting the centre.

The last of September is usually our last opening, but we can come in for you by appointment. You can just pay at the door. Yes, we’re two hours from Halifax and it sounds like a great little trip for you.

Please email me a couple of weeks prior to remind me and confirm, and I’ll make sure someone is here for you.

All the best,

Wanita

Immediately becoming our new best friend, I responded:

Thank you for your prompt and very customer-service-oriented response and generosity, Wanita! I will definitely email you a couple of weeks before our trip to confirm and with any further details we might have at that time.

We appreciate you!

John & Bob

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Drive to the centre

I woke up too early and couldn’t get back to sleep perseverating about the route to the Anne Murray Centre, which I had failed to investigate and print in case we couldn’t get wi-fi/GPS service, so I got up and used some of our free NCL wi-fi minutes to look at Google Maps and write down the directions just in case.

Earlier in the week, our friend Al found out that another guy traveling with our group was interested in going to the Anne Murray Centre. His name was Ron, and he did indeed join us today.

Walking to the nearby Budget rental place, we passed this “beflagged” building waving the extra-inclusive pride flag among the others:

The drive from the port at Halifax to the centre in Springhill, NS was just over two hours, and we were able to connect our Google Maps GPS to the car’s system, so it was an uneventful trip.

The three of us talked about a lot of things on the way — from sharing jokes to philosophical discussions about sex, relationships, and potential ethical implications of including in book chapters or blog entries stories about, or photos of, people we know, have met, or have observed — just to name a few of the topics we discussed.

Also, Ron actually wasn’t that familiar with Anne Murray’s music, admitting the he really only knew the songs she did that were covers of other artists (e.g., Kenny Loggins’ Danny’s Song & The Monkees’ Daydream Believer), so Bob gave him the blow-by-blow of her entire life and career during our ride there. 😂

Ron surprised, and delighted, us with two gifts for letting him tag along with us — and he paid our entrance fee to the centre:

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And then we were there!

Inside we met Wanita, the Executive Director with whom we’d corresponded back in April, and Miriam — both of whom were an absolute delight. Wanita welcomed us and Miriam told us a little about how the centre was set up to go through.

If you read our letter exchange with Wanita above, you know the centre had closed for the season and they were opening it for us “by appointment” today, but as it turned out, several folks from Saskatchewan had called about visiting even though it was closed and Wanita had said, “You’re in luck! We’re already opening today for some guys coming from a cruise ship for a visit.”

Here’s Anne at the entrance with her “Ultra Fan” (that’s how the people who run the centre refer to fans like Bob):

Also at the entrance was this ad of when Anne’s book first came out and a wall quote about the centre (ignore that errant semicolon in it — I did):

We started our self-tour!

A framed copy of other songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 on November 4, 1978 when Anne’s hit, You Needed Me, reached #1:

Bob’s photos, most of them highlighting her records and awards.

And we wouldn’t be gay if we didn’t notice some of her outfits.

Anne Murray was born and raised in Springhill, NS (where the centre is), and her father was the town doctor.

Before the town became famous because she was from it, it was mostly known for its mining disasters. Anne honored that history in this display in her centre.

And the town has a monument to the 1891 accident in which 125 miners died.

Before we left, we met Miriam back in the gift shop, where we bought the only souvenirs of our entire cruise, including this refrigerator magnet and pen. We bought a couple of other pens and several post cards.

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Return drive

Our ride back to Halifax was a little bit stressful, as at one point, Google Maps had us traversing two separate 7-kilometer-long dirt roads, which we did not encounter on the way there. I hate when GPS does that shit. Then we hit traffic jams in 4 different places where they were repaving the highway and had lane closures of several kilometers each. Even though we had plenty of time to get back to the ship before it left the port… well, let’s just say that patience is not a forte of mine.

Rental car return

We appreciated that the rental car guy told us when we were picking up the car to get gas upon our return at the first place we came to after getting of the highway, because gas is the same price at every gas station in this province, and it gets complicated to get some the closer you get to the congested area where there are 3 (huge) cruise ships in port today. We heeded his advice, which made it an uneventful gas stop.

Finally back at the rental car place, we got stuck at the gate into the garage where you returned the car. We had to grab a ticket to raise the gate arm, and I had to open the car door to reach the ticket machine. It was one of those cars that turns off when you stop for any amount of time at all, and it did.

When I got back in, started it back up, put it in drive, and pressed the gas, the car wouldn’t move. I was freaking out, just knowing a car would pull in behind us as it was the only entrance into the garage. Then I thought, “Well, if we’re going to get stuck, this is the place to do it.” The rental car office was just inside the gate, although no one noticed us stuck there to come out and help. Finally I noticed that I had inadvertently engaged the emergency break. Whew!

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Back on the Norwegian Getaway

We got back on the ship at around 4:30, and Bob and I had a snack in The Garden Cafe, since we hadn’t had any lunch and it was already getting close to dinner time.

Before we knew it, it was time for BearCruise happy hour in the Mixx bar. To our delight, Brian & Gwen (whom we’d met at our table during our Teppanyaki dinner last night) showed up, and we shared a drink and fun conversation until their imminent dinner reservation time.

We had dinner with Cronin in one of the complementary dining rooms, either Savor or Taste…

it’s all a blur when I wait a day or two to catch up my blog! Cronin is always a pleasure to be around.

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We stopped by the Bliss Bar at for the “Late-Night Party with DJ Tax,” but we’d had a long day and left after just a little bit.