How did we end up here?

Just pinch me.  A Holiday Inn Express this isn't.  Not even a Hampton.

This is the front entrance to the Hyatt Regency Cleveland at the Arcade from across Superior Avenue.  One of the earliest indoor shopping malls in the country, it opened in May 1890, Victorian through and through.  Our room overlooks the entrance on the top floor in this photograph.

The door to our room on the 4th floor



From the windows looking in




The view from the position of our room's door, but two floors down
(so as not to have the Hyatt sign/banner competition), featuring 300' of skylight and four wrap-around balconies. 




Skylight detail



Stairwell detail

We look out our windows at the Cleveland Public Library -- the original 1925-building and the new 1997-wing.  They are connected underground and by the Eastman Reading Garden, which has a beguiling set of gates.

Gates into Eastman Reading Garden at the Cleveland Public Library

Gate detail

All in all, I'm thinking the Road Scholar, Blount, Coastal Discoveries people are feeling really bad about our having been put off the boat ...

What almost wasn't

This is a trip that very nearly did not happen.  And, it might yet end up dry-docked, so to speak.  Rain has been falling for some time in New York state.  The Erie Canal has been able to be opened, although one lock might still be troublesome for our ship.  But, the Finger Lakes are draining at a furious rate and the water is so high on the Oswego Canal (which connects the Eric Canal to Lake Ontario) as to make it unusable.

So, the published itinerary has been altered radically, slowing down our progress in hopes that the magic date of May 27th will actually mark the canal's opening for the season.  At any rate, we are aboard, afloat, cast off, underway!

This our first view of the Grande Mariner from the coach which transported us from the Johnson & Wales Inn in Seekonk MA to the dock in Warren RI.  I'll work at getting a better shot from a dock along the way, a shot without junk in the foreground.

I feel sorry for those who planned and who are leading this historic waterways trip -- for the long-established and now undone schedule, for the last minute scramble they're going to have to handle through the coming 15 days.  While I have a disappointment or two related to stops we'll not longer be able to make, I don't feel particularly sorry for myself or us passengers.  We are off on an adventure!

Nancy Hauswald, program manager for Coastal Discoveries in Belfast ME, the company offering this trip for Road Scholar/Elderhostel, wrote us a letter about the situation in the Oswego Canal which awaited us in our cabins.  She included this quote from "The Wind in the Willows" (Kenneth Grahame):

Boats ... in or out of 'em, it doesn't matter.  Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it.  Whether you get away, or whether you don't, whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular, and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not ... The Mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness ... 'What a day I'm having!' he said.  'Let us start at once.'