Thursday 7 October 2010

Baddeck – the smurfs are coming!


Rain still exists! After days and days of sunshine and fantastic weather, finally reality reached us this morning. A Beaufort 7 was announced in Anja’s morning greeting and outside it was wet and miserable, with a very poor visibility. But who cares? Everybody agreed that better bad weather here than in so many other stunning places we have visited.
At 11 o’clock the pilot came on board to navigate the ship to Baddeck on Cape Breton Island. Once more, the blue smurfs invaded a little village – although this one is considerably larger than any of the others of our itinerary. A beautiful peaceful resort town with lovely wooden houses. And once more we were lucky: as soon as we came along side the pier, the rain magically stopped.
The most famous inhabitant of the area was Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. We learned more about the life of this great man in the local museum (extremely worth while a visit) and during the guided city walks that some of us joined. Mr Bell actually had a lifelong passion and dedication for teaching the deaf and his career started when doing research on hearing and speech. He married Mabel Hubbard, who was deaf herself. It was a very happy and close couple. A sculpture was recently produced illustrating both of them on a bench, just across the bay of their house, which still belongs to the descendents.
At the end of a day we were rewarded with a very special moment: the sighting of an amazing raptor with white head and tail – the bald eagle, so characteristic of North America!