Polar Survival Suit

The Fram's mandatory safety lecture Sunday morning included how to get into the polar survival suits. And on top of this you put a life vest. I will put my faith on the captain and crew to transport us without needed to do such chic attire.

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A Canadian Thanksgiving

Once ashore in Halifax Monday I sought in vain to replenish my cigar supply, and pick up a Cuban or two to enjoy at sea. But it was Canadian Thanksgiving, and all stores selling decent stogies shut. Still, I wanted to enjoy a relaxing cigar after walking up and down the Spring Garden Road shopping district. I found as bench in the sun in front of the Halifax Memorial Library and lit up. Then I turned around to find Winston Churchill gazing upon me, undoubtedly as upset as when Yousef Karsh took away the PM's cigar to make his iconic photograph. I did my best to imitate the Churchillian scowl. A traveling companion from Glasgow thinks I nailed it. Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting account of the story behind the photo. The downtown shopping district of this city of about 400,000 was filled with people -- most of them tourists off the four cruise ships tied up a 15-minute walk away in the harbor, though some locals were taking advantage of the warm if overcast weath...

Salem: Great Knockers

Forget the witches or the House of the Seven Gables when visiting Salem, Massachusetts. Instead, see a great set of knockers, and a whole lot of whimsical metalwork, at Herb Mackey's Metal Sculpture Yard, the last house on Blaney Street aside the parking lot for the Salem-Boston Ferry. It's free, and I'm told the whimsical welder who created the metal creatures will come out to chat when he's home. On Saturday, after spending a delightful time over a lingering lunch with my cousins Susan and Rita, who took the train to Salem from their Cambridge homes, I took a slow stroll through downtown Salem, maneuvering among the witches, warlocks and hanger-ons who descend upon this historic maritime hub to commemorate a nasty period in American colonial history, the Salem witch trials. The hordes made the Halloween crowds who descend on my neighborhood for Eastern State Penitentiary's annual scare show seem puny. Salem's most notable cultural attraction is ...

Newport: Memory of Childhood

To most the city of Newport, Rhode Island, is associated with the Gilded Age mansions lining Ocean Avenue and the Cliff Walk. For me it's the Awful Awful. The Awful Awful is a thick milkshake, but instead of being made from ice cream, milk and syrup, most of its dairy content comes from ice milk. It originated at Bond's, a northern New Jersey ice cream chain with an outpost in my home town, Elizabeth. It got it's name because it's "Awful Big, Awful Good". Drink three and get your name inscribed on the wall, plus a fourth for free. Two ice cream chains in New England took notice of the thick shake and bought rights to market it under the Awful Awful name anywhere but in Bond's home territory of the Garden State. But when one of them starting expanding, not being able to enter the New Jersey market was a major impediment, so they changed the name to Fribble. That's what the chain -- Friendly's -- continues to call its shake, though it...

Greenland Passage

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