Leaf Peeping on the Norwegian Jewel

For the last couple of years, ever since I have been addicted to occasionally checking Facebook, my sweet cousin Pam in Rhode Island has talked about leaf peeping in the fall. When I would read this, I would smile gently at how clever she was to make up a cute little name for looking at fall leaves.

You. All.

Leaf peeping is an actual thing.

And we are going to engage in it. In just about a week.

I honestly didn’t realize that leaf peeping was an actual activity that people actually engaged in until we began planning a trip up the coast of New England and Canada with NCL on the Norwegian Jewel.

And now I’m going to tell you about what happens when you get too full of yourself and think you know everything there is to know about travel and cruising. You get smacked down, that’s what happens.

When I first started planning this cruise that we have talked about for ages – the leaves! the scenery! New England! lobster rolls! – I had carefully picked out a completely fabulous cruise that was perfect in every way. Only, when I started talking to the lovely and kind Amanda Graham with NCL about the cruise I was thinking about, she was a little confused in her return email. We have no cruise to New England on that date, Jan, she wrote diplomatically.

And, exasperated, I wrote back that I was at that very minute looking at it on their web page and maybe she was looking at the wrong place and OMG I am the travel writer expert, remember? (the last part just in my head, fortunately)

And then she replied gently and kindly that I was looking at the cruises for 2012. Not 2011.

Uh. Oh. Yeah. Forget that travel expert part. Thank heavens it was just in my head.

Eventually we got things straightened out and booked a cruise that leaves from New York City (does anyone except those of us in the South add “city” to New York?) and heads up to Canada and New England for seven days on the Norwegian Jewel. We are particularly excited because we are going to places that not only have we never visited, we…um…actually have never heard of before. The Bay of Fundy? Now, tell me you have heard of the Bay of Fundy and I will be very impressed with your geographical expertise.

Which apparently is much better than mine.

But even though we have never heard of some of these places, we are all about visiting them. We are planning to hike through woods festooned with gold and scarlet leaves and sailing on a wooden schooner and there may be whale watching and there will definitely be lots of chowder eating.

And, of course, there will be leaf peeping. Lots and lots of leaf peeping.

Now, because it is physically impossible for me to just fly somewhere and do something and my husband has resigned himself to this, we are not only stopping in Niagara Falls on our way, but we are also staying in New York City for a few days before the cruise.

We are excited to stay at The Red Coach Inn while we are in Niagara Falls and equally excited that we are going to visit both the American and the Canadian sides of the falls. And hoping for a photo opp where we can have one foot in each of the countries because, seriously, how cool would that be?

In New York City, we will be staying at this super fabulous and brand-new hotel called The Nolitan which is right near Little Italy and Chinatown and can you say delicious food? I knew you could. We are going to see the Statue of Liberty right up close instead of in the distance as we sail out the Hudson like the last time, pay a visit to Ground Zero, and take another wooden schooner sailing trip. We are also having dinner one night at The Ember Room and going to see Jersey Boys just to ratchet the excitement up another notch.

And then, just about the time we are about to drop from exhaustion, we will board our lovely Norwegian Jewel and have a whole day at sea to relax. We even have a balcony stateroom, one of our favorite things. And, learning a painful lesson from our last, very noisy stateroom, we chose the location a little more carefully this time and I think our stateroom is going to be just lovely.

I am excited about cruising with Norwegian Cruise Lines and hope to do some live-blogging as we venture out into leaf peeping territory for the first time. And, now that you know all about leaf peeping, I bet you are all excited to read about it too.

Or at least mildly interested.

Oh, you know you want to go leaf peeping with me. At least virtually.

So, check back. Leaf peeping begins very soon.

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