17-27 Sep 24 Tour Review
We just got back from the tour so I thought I’d write a brief summary/review. This was our first North American tour with Tauck.
If your idea of a perfect tour is 5 star hotels, gourmet restaurants, and majestic museums/castles/cathedrals, this might not be the tour for you. The hotels tended to be more business conference sites except for the last two – Keltic Inn and Liscombe Lodge -which were more unique. But all provided clean rooms, adequate facilities and friendly staffs. The food was good but not gourmet. The best meals were the welcome dinner at the Halifax Citadel, a couple of the hotel dinners and the caviar/sturgeon 7 course event. Of course seafood abounds but there was always other options. The museums were small but interesting. Anne of Green Gables fans would enjoy the tour there. The main "sight" was the scenery like Quaint Lunenburg, Peggy’s Cove, the PEI coast and especially Cape Breton.
We added both pre and post tour nights to the tour. Coming from outwest as we do, there was no itinerary that would get us into Halifax earlier than 10pm. The final tour day doesn’t end until noon and they recommend not booking flights earlier than 2pm. So we, and about 8 others, stayed another night for a very early morning departure. It’s a good idea anyway as the tour itinerary doesn’t include any Halifax sites and the hotel rate was reasonable. The Prince George was very nice and well located. There was a change to day 3 of our tour due to ferry schedules so we did get to visit the Immigration Museum.
This is a very casual tour. At the welcome only one man had a sport coat and it was a very casual one. Mostly you want to be able to adjust to temperatures. Being Sep we had a couple of sunny days in the 80s but the rest were cool and often cloudy when I wore a light jacket or puffer. Only got rain the last day. None of the hotels had robes or slippers, though most had pools/hot tubs so you might want to include flip flops if you plan to visit. Also, only the Prince George had room safes so we typically brought our passports with us daily in waist bags. The Delta hotels in St John and Charlottetown had coin operated laundries if needed.
It's not a physically demanding tour rated as a 2 but could be a 1 if someone wanted to just skip a few short hikes or climbs. All the hotels had elevators except the last 2 that were only 2 story buildings.
Will this tour rank high on our favorites list for all the wonderful sights we saw? Probably not but I’m glad we went. It’s a very interesting area wrt the history and the different people who have lived there like the Acadians, the Scots, and the native Mi'kmaq. It was also a unique tour in that our TD was a local having grown up in New Brunswick and lives in Halifax. He and his family’s history made the tour much more personal. It’s my understanding that all Tauck Canadian tours must have a Canadian TD. In my opinion that is a smart choice.
If I can answer anyone’s questions about the tour, feel free to ask. I’ll try to post some pictures.
Comments
Claudia - Nice report, as to the hotels they are just like the ones I experienced in Nova Scotia and PEI but like you said the rooms were clean and the staff was friendly, that's good enough for me. I didn't spend much time in the rooms anyway.
Yep took this tour years ago. Most of the hotels only had full size beds too. Sam, there was a tall guy who the TD had to request the few queen size beds for him. We still think about the Poutine we had on that trip and the whale showing off by our boat.
All our rooms had either a king sized bed or 2 queens.