In port at St. John, leaving the ship resembled a human demolition derby with only one gangplank available whether you were getting on, getting off, going sideways (which some people seemed determined to do), walking, riding or doing the “land mine shuffle” with a variety of walkers and canes. Carnival has created a mathematically paradoxical state where extremely regimented linear motion approaches it’s opposite state --- total chaos. Einstein would be both proud and thoroughly confused.
Once ashore and looking for stuff to do, we saw a brochure for a “Diversity Tour” touting the factoid that St. John has historically had twice as many minorities as anywhere else in the Maritimes. Unfortunately they were both away that day, so we passed on the tour. Everything else we saw was either a cemetery, a church or the Bay of Fundy retaining 45 feet water which the wives weren't all that crazy to watch for some reason. We ended up paying a cab driver $45.00US per hour plus tip to drive us around and point out the places we would have seen IF we could have seen them. I know it sounds like we got taken, but Taxi Tom was friendly and it was worth the money to give us a laugh and stick him with a story nobody’s ever gonna believe about tourists that incredibly stupid. Canadiens are uniformly nice people and Tom, perhaps feeling guilty as we stopped to look at another invisible landmark, told me a local fable about a huge and bizarre monster which makes horrible noises in the fog, apparently never leaves and won’t ever die. My immediate reaction was “so what - we’ve got Rosie and Hillary” but I didn’t want to be rude so I kept quiet. With Reversing Falls in neutral/boring mode and being unable to find a restaurant that had both lobster and a table for eight at the same time, the wives went back to shopping and guys took the kids back to the ship. Turned out to be a really bad move. Once again for emphasis – a . really . bad . move.