Saturday 9 September - Our last full day on board

We awoke to see that we were still shrouded in dense fog with the ship's horn still sounding out as we approached Bar Harbor.

We're worried in case we might have a repeat of our Bay of Islands experience on our cruise around New Zealand.  Both places are said to be exceptionally pretty but at the Bay of Islands it threw it down all the time that we were there and visibility was down to less than 100 metres - it was so bad that we didn't even get off the ship there.

However, we didn't have an excursion booked at the Bay of Islands whereas we do here and this is our second tendering port, so that will make getting on and off the ship a little more time-consuming.

But of course, before that we have the tiresome tradition of having to present ourselves to the US immigration officials on board.  Whereas we can breeze in and out of Canada solely by means of a completed immigration form, here we have to have the full works as usual. And the ship's notes on this remind us that we will be subject to a fine of $3,000 if we avoid presenting ourselves.  A further nice touch is that our disembarkation notes for Sunday tell us that US residents get a duty free allowance of $800 whereas anyone else is allowed only $100 as a duty free allowance. Note to self: try to avoid cruises leaving and re-entering US waters in future!

Luckily as we had breakfast the sun came out and the clouds had by now burned off.

Seaborn Quest (expensive!) was also in port

Immigration went smoothly - an examination of passports, a mug shot of each of us and questions as to when we had first entered the US for this cruise and what we would do now that we were entering the US again.

We then went to get on the tender to Bar Harbor. We sat on the top deck and had a lovely trip to the shore. Bar Harbor is indeed a lovely place with restaurants (all selling lobster) and shops. By now it was roasting hot so we wandered round the town sticking to the shade as much as we could.

How much?! You cannot be serious!

I won't have more than just the one!

Our watering hole for a liquid lunch. There's a Paddy's Bar everywhere!

Many houses here were summer homes for the wealthy

We were booked on an excursion to Acadia National Park. Whilst the national park is lovely, we had ended up on a 27 mile coach tour of pine trees with only one 20-minute stop. Once again we found ourselves with a tour guide with verbal diarrhoea, talking about which millionaire had done this or that for the park. It finally came to an end and we were back on the tender.

This was bought by one of the many millionaires to frequent this place, but was passed to his third wife as part of her divorce settlement. He lost other fine houses that way too.

Believe it or not, these are the tallest cliffs on the eastern US seaboard

A favourite spot for a wedding photo

Our guide spoke angrily of this - toll booths. When various millionaires bought up tracts of land to donate to the public they wanted them to have free access for the people and it used to be so.  Want to drive on the 27-mile island drive? That'll now be $10, sir.  Want to go up to the top of Cadillac Mountain? That'll now be another $5, sir.  With a coach of 51 passengers that's quite a bit of dough.

We were back in time for a couple of sherries whilst listening to our favourite strings duo.  Then a bit of packing before pre-dinner drinks and our last dinner. We said our good-byes to our waiting teams and then headed to the theatre for the Whitney Houston tribute which was really good although G did enjoy the show so much that he once again had a short nap.

We tended to be put on one of two tables. This was the main waiter on one of them

Crystal Stark as Whitney Houston, a finalist on X-Factor US

Our usual waitress in Al Bacio

Then it was a port each, a hot chocolate each and bed.