Our visit to Saint John was not very successful. We looked for a bus station and instead found ourselves in back streets. Taking the tourist path to the Reversing Falls or spending time at the shore front restaurants would have been better options.
Our cruise to Canada and New England took us across the Atlantic to St John’s, Newfoundland; Sydney, Nova Scotia; Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; two days in New York City; Newport, Rhode Island, Boston, Massachusetts; Rockland, Maine; Saint John, New Brunswick; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and back across the Atlantic to Southampton.
Day 17 Monday 30th September 2019: Saint John, New Brunswick
Sapphire Princess docked at around 6 am. We went for a late breakfast just before the restaurant closed. We shared our table with a couple who loved to play poker and were disappointed that their passion wasn’t shared by many other passengers.
Once off the ship we went through the Marco Polo Terminal building. In there we stopped for a while to connect to the Wi-Fi. Our plan for the day was to go to the bus station and see where we could get to.
After leaving the terminal we turned left and walked towards busy crossroads that we could see. There we had a choice, left, straight on or turn right. We turned right. Later we found that we should have turned left, keeping the water on our left and walked past the shopping plaza.
Not a scenic part of Saint John
As we walked up and away from the water front the parts of Saint John that we found ourselves in were not the best. Clearly our reading of the map was wrong as the streets had seedy shops and businesses and we were not finding the bus station that was marked on the map very easily. Hidden away in empty lots I did find some art but I was very uncomfortable using my DSLR and instead used my iPhone. Eventually we walked down a steep street to where we thought the bus station was and there we turned past the stadium.
Past the stadium, at the crossroads we could see the ship so we realised that we walked the wrong way and returned and walked back past the stadium. The bus station was no more than a building shared with a furniture store and offices. This bus station was for buses that went out of Saint John rather than around it. We were helpfully advised to walk back past the sports arena and to look for the tourist path.
The tourist path
This was a red paved way that lead around the river and went eventually to the reversing falls. This was one of the places we wanted to go to so we set off walking again. Through a large empty lot we could see the ship and realised just how far we had walked in a circle. We could have saved ourselves an hour or more of walking if we had turned the other way at the crossroads just outside the terminal.
The path took us through public gardens and gave us great views across the harbour as well as lots of interesting historical notices to read.
Under flyovers.
Eventually we came up to a busy road and followed it away from the city centre. We met other passengers returning who told is that we we would take about another 20 or 30 minutes to get to the Falls and the cafés that were there.
On the left we walked past a large parking lot and office is next to more warehouses. The road climbs up the hill in front of us and we passed more passengers off the ship on the way back. At the top of the hill we could see the bridge.