Day 7 Boothbay  Harbor  June 28, 2021

  Well, Tom is a tech genius. We will now be able to send email. Tom is using his mobile phone as a hot spot.  Who knew?

  Today was Boothbay Harbor. What a pretty little town. It was not jammed with tourists like Bar Harbor. It did have cute little shops with interesting trinkets. It had a popcorn shop and I had to have some. They probably had 50 different flavors.  We bought Boothbay mix of butter and old fashion caramel. The caramel was made out of brown sugar and molasses. It is delicious.

   This morning we ate with the ship’s piano player. That was fun talking piano. The other couple at our table was from Scotland. She played violin, piano, and bagpipe.  Listening to her talk about the bagpipe was most interesting. We learned it is definitely not an easy instrument to play. However, her claim to fame, according to her, was teaching children to read. She was a reading assistant. The school wanted her to take four children for an hour. She was passionate about wanting one child for fifteen minutes. Her key to success was to find a book that made the child laugh.

   We have bonded with two other couples which are a lot of fun. To my surprise the woman who was from Berlin married a Ryan. Small world! His family too, came over to avoid the potato famine in Ireland and came to Canada first. Then he moved to Oklahoma and mine went to MN. Who would know I would meet a cousin on a cruise. I have never met another Ryan.

   His wife’s story is interesting. She first came to NY City with a $100 to her name. She had a distant, distant relative in Chicago who let her live with them for a few months. By the time she took the Grey Hound bus from NY City to Chicago she had $25. She had a job in two days in the bad part of Chicago. She was determined to get out of East Germany. 

   Yesterday, we had breakfast with a man who told another interesting story. He had an oriental man working for him in Canada. He asked him how he came to North America. He told him that when he was ten he stowed away on a cargo ship. The man who told the story, said he had a ten year old at the time and didn’t think he could find his way to Walmart, much less stow away, survive on the Pacific crossing, get off and survive in the streets.

More to follow,

Tom & Holly