Toronto to Georgian Bay - An Exhausting Effort - Day 2 - Part 1

Viking Cruises description of our first full day and our second official day of the Georgian Bay pre-cruise extension:

Day 2 - Killarney

This morning, take a scenic drive through Toronto, passing iconic landmarks such as the CN Tower, as well as the Entertainment District, Chinatown, Queen's Park, the Ontario Legislative Building and more. Leave the commotion of the city behind as you head to the Killarney Mountain Lodge. Stop for photos at Penetanguishene, the "Gateway to Georgian Bay," and lunch en route. After a welcome reception and check-in, savor a delicious dinner at the lodge's restaurant. (B, L, D)

For reference, if anyone is not familiar with land based scheduled tour companies, the (B, L, D) listed at the bottom of today's description means that breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be provided for you in some shape or fashion. Some days, it might only say B if it's a travel day between places or only say B, D when the day is spent exploring on your own.

This morning, we made a point of getting up early enough to have our bags repacked and ready for inside the room pickup. We also budgeted a good bit of time to partake of breakfast in the hotel's restaurant. Viking provided vouchers to cover this meal. Each voucher covered "Any one choice of a breakfast item" and "Any one choice of drip coffee/tea/Tropicana juice." If you chose to order anything beyond that then it would be charged to your room.

I kept it light fueling up with scrambled eggs and juice while Dad opted for the breakfast platter with an omelette, potatoes, and an english muffin with juice.

We could easily see from our table where Tina and our group were gathering. Once we joined them, we noticed that Tina seemed frustrated and spent time dealing with an issue on the phone. Each time she noticed a new person arrive however, she had them verify that all of their luggage was on the carts waiting to be put on our bus. I took a few minutes during this wait to ask at the check in desk whether we needed to check out of the hotel ourselves. Once it was confirmed that we didn't charge anything to the room, I handed over the card keys to our room. I didn't notice anyone else bothering to do this so I'm not sure if we had to or it was an option on the TV like most hotels these days. Those of us in this pre-cruise group took the time to introduce ourselves and meet everyone. The chance to get to know several fellow cruisers in a smaller setting before everyone gets on the ship to do their own things is one of my favorite parts of doing a land tour before a cruise. Then it becomes like running into an old friend when you spot each other on board. Hello to any of the kind souls we met these first few days if you're reading this! I hope we cross paths again someday on a future cruise.

Once everyone had arrived, Tina explained that our morning plans were delayed because the bus was late. She had been calling the driver and the company to find out what was going on. After an hour or so past when we were scheduled to leave the hotel, our bus showed up. Once we all boarded the bus, Tina learned that fish and chips was also going to be offered as a lunch choice. A few people changed their choices and Tina sent the updated list to the restaurant as our bus driver started driving.

Once that was taken care of, Tina gave us an abbreviated tour of the city of Toronto as our bus delay made us running behind schedule. I was disappointed that there was no ability to stop anywhere and your view/picture taking was limited to where your seat happened to be on the bus. To be fair, the description only refers to a "scenic drive." We did get an overview explanation with some history in addition to a couple extra fun spots that Tina threw in. 

The CN Tower (above) and The Royal York Hotel (below)

Tell me you visited Canada without telling me you visited Canada:

One of the fun stops was a fountain designed to look like the water was spraying out of the sculpted dogs' mouths. Note the golden bone at the top:

And a side trip to view Casa Loma from the street:

After this tour, we doubled back to the Sheraton for a restroom stop. Tina explained her reason for choosing to revert back to the hotel as it was a place she could be sure had nice bathroom facilities. Many of our group felt that we either should have waited for a bathroom break at lunch or done the tour the night before to help us get on the road to the lodge sooner. There did seem to be some wasted time with not only backtracking to use the restrooms but also because we ended up passing everything on the tour a third time on the way to the restaurant. 

Our lunch today was at Pier 21 Restaurant and Bar. The place was fairly small so I was glad to hear that Viking had arranged for this restaurant to open today solely for our group. 

Each table was provided with bread and we were first served small plates of a pre-dressed salad. 

Did you switch to the fish and chips option or is that a breadstick on your plate? Nope, this was the chicken dish I requested. I get the whole feeding a crowd (15 of us including Tina and the bus driver) needing something quick and easy but the hamburger was bigger than this piece of chicken. It did taste good though and the one waitress was great with prompt service. There was coffee and tea set up in self serve pots along with a small assortment of bite size chocolate treats for dessert. 

With full bellies and everyone taking advantage of the restaurant's restrooms, we boarded the bus and took off for the four hour drive to Killarney Mountain Lodge where we were to stay for the rest of our land portion. Along the way, we stopped at a bus depot where we finally learned the reason for the morning delay. Our assigned bus driver who should have been with us from this morning until the ship, had his previous day's shift run longer than expected. Per company rules and for safety, he was required to have a certain number of hours off between shifts. As a result, the company had to scramble and find another driver who still had available drive hours to cover our morning route. This substitute driver had to return us to the bus depot because his limit of hours had now been reached. Our intended driver was now able to take over and we headed back out on the road to the lodge. 

The further we drove north, the area became more and more remote and the only sounds disrupting the reading and sleeping (thankfully not including the driver) was all of our electronic devices beeping and chirping when we drove through the tiniest bit of cell signal. 

When we arrived at the lodge, it was late afternoon/early evening. We were instructed to leave our bags while the bus driver unloaded them from the bus. I later learned that the hotel staff was completely confused at what to do with our bags until Tina pointed out that the names should be matched up to the rooms assigned in the lodge's system. While that was going on, we were all made to line up at the reception desk to check in so we could get room keys and put a credit card on file for a hold. At the time we arrived, there was one employee working the desk and she spent an extended period of time talking to another guest about the amenity and tour options. When Tina asked her to get some help to get our group checked in, the employee told her that she couldn't because they were too short staffed. She then went back to chatting with the other guest. Granted, I've never worked at a hotel but if I saw a large crowd come in that only needed two minutes each to check in, I'd have politely asked the first guest to hold on or come back in a little while so that I could clear out this group that was now creating a bottleneck in the entrance area waiting in line. 

Soon another employee came out from the back and started checking us in. Unfortunately, this employee was unfamiliar with the system and had trouble getting our credit card to work. She tried asking the first employee to help but the employee brushed her off in favor of continuing to talk to the other guest. After multiple tries of incorrect steps, the employee checking us in declared that our credit card was the problem. We pointed out that we had just used the same exact credit card at the Toronto hotel with no issue but she continued to insist that it was a refusal by our credit card company because we were Americans using a credit card in Canada. We asked her to get a manager to help but she stalled instead pushing for another card. Thankfully we had a debit card on hand that she was able to enter only after the first employee finally agreed to help her. When the employee assigned to host our group at the lodge showed up, we explained the issue to him. The employee at the desk quickly defended herself by insisting that there isn't any issue since the second card worked. The group host simply parroted her "but the second card worked!" response. Knowing that the charges were only a hold, we gave up trying to make our point and stepped into the main lodge room. By the time we finished at the desk, the first employee finally started taking people from our group and the line moved quicker.

We all filtered in to the main room as we finished checking in waiting to hear from the lodge's group host what our agenda was going to be. The group host seemed very flustered and confused and spent a lot of time going back and forth checking with other employees about what he should be doing for us. Then when we started asking questions, he encouraged us to keep waiting by promising a welcome cocktail was on the way. Telling a group of tired travelers who have just gone from four hours on a bus to an hour standing in line to just keep waiting was not the best response. Then he tried to make up for this cocktail that never came by fetching a tray of cups with water. Better move however, would have been to know that you have 14 people in your group and not bring over only five cups of water. 

He finally got a couple sign up sheets printed out and explained that we needed to sign up for whether we wanted to do the walking tour to a lighthouse and a separate boat ride tour either in the morning session or the afternoon session the next day. The second sheet was us choosing what flavor sandwich we wanted in our boxed lunch for our final day of traveling from the lodge to the ship. The boxed lunch sheet did have a column to note if you had any food allergies. It was a bit chaotic as he would give an explanation and then get twenty questions from those in our group who had only just finished checking in. I began to wonder if part of his job training was how to evasively answer questions because when we had questions about the tour specifics such as length of walking and how difficult was the hike, he gave the most non committal answers I've heard since my days of working with children. 

Once everyone had signed up on those sheets, he wanted to lead us on a welcome tour of the grounds with a promise that at the end he would show us where we would be having dinner. After about 10-15 minutes of this walking tour, someone in our group spoke up to ask when dinner was scheduled. We had yet to be given any sort of paperwork for our time here that related to a schedule of events. Tina asked both our group host and a manager for it this evening and was assured they would have something written up for us by morning. When the group host answered that dinner was scheduled for 30 minutes from now, several of our group insisted that the welcome tour be abandoned in favor of having time to visit our rooms and freshen up. Our group host seemed taken aback at having his plan altered and referred to the main lodge building's restaurant as our dinner venue before gesturing at where our rooms were. 

We all headed to find our rooms which were decorated in the rustic mountain lodge theme with doors that opened to the outside. This row of rooms were all on the bottom level and required stepping up via a few steps onto a wrap around deck. I walked the grounds during some downtime later and did not see very much in the way of handicap accessibility to these rooms. Our room had two double beds, air conditioning, a mini fridge, a desk, and a dresser. The bathroom was average sized with a single sink and shower stall. There was no TV or phone in the rooms. We were told also that the wi-fi, while included, did not extend beyond the main lodge building. 

To be continued...