October 7th – Titanic Halifax

In the morning, we walked from the ship up to the top of Halifax's tallest hill to explore the city's imposing Citadel – an historic star-shaped fortress that was Britain's major military base in North America for 150 years. The fortress was manned by a number of kilted "soldiers" (actors really), who put on good demonstrations of 18th century military procedures, and changing of the guard ceremonies. Tracy tried hard to get the bagpipe player to let her have a go on his pipes (no double entendre intended), but unsurprisingly, he didn't want to share his instrument with her.

In the afternoon, I joined the ship's "Titanic Experience" Tour, which explored the city's close connection with the Titanic tragedy. When the ship struck the iceberg 100 years ago, Halifax was the nearest mainland port to the site of the tragedy, and so ships were dispatched from here with the gruesome task of picking up any bodies. When they reached the site 700 miles away, the ships picked up around 300 of the floating dead; and in the best traditions of the class system, most of the Third Class corpses were quickly buried at sea. It was reasoned that only the First Class passengers would have the resources to either pay for their bodies to be repatriated or to be buried on land.

We went to the Fairview Lawn Cemetery, a fairly bleak place on a grey day like today, where we inspected the three lines of simple graves – some still unidentified, others marked by just their names, and just a few with more ornate gravestones. It was depressing to think that these hundred or so graves were less than 10% of the total lost at sea. Lovers of the film "Titanic" are normally excited to see that there is a grave of a "J. Dawson", but they're then disappointed to find out that he was just a British coal stoker named Joseph, not the fictional "Jack" played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film.

After the cemetery, we moved onto the town's excellent Maritime Museum, to find out more about the Titanic, and about Halifax's other great maritime disaster, the Great Explosion which took place in the harbour in 1917. During the First World War, munitions ship collided with a freighter and set fire to the ship's highly combustible cargo of half a million tons of TNT – it caused the biggest explosion in human history prior to the atomic age, killed 2,000 people, injured 9,000 people, and destroyed a large part of the city. The second decade of the 20th century must have been a pretty depressing time for the Haligonians.

October 6th – Leaf-Peeping in Bar Harbor

Today we visited the charming little resort town of Bar Harbor, on Mount Desert Island in Maine. In the summer, people flock here for its relaxed unspoilt atmosphere and for its beaches, while in autumn, the main attraction is the changing colours of its fall foliage in the stunning Acadia National Park.

It appears that it's been an unusually warm summer up here, so the leaves are changing a little later than usual; but, even though the leaves aren't yet in full colour, there's still a fair amount of flaming reds and bright oranges to be seen amongst the densely forested hills of the island.

The fog that had been following us has lifted a little, but not as far as the top of Cadillac Mountain, which was blanketed in fog, which made our trip up there to enjoy the views a little redundant. However, at sea level, the countryside was typically beautiful – wild coastlines, thick forests reflected in clear lakes, and gentle green hillsides.

This is a stunning part of the world – fingers crossed that the weather will allow it to live up to its potential when we get back here in a few days time.

October 5th – We Are Family in Boston

Today I got the chance to meet up with my cousin Chris in Boston.

Boston's a very walkable city, so we walked from the Shuttle Drop off point at Quincy Market, over to his office in the John Hancock Building in Back Bay. On the way, we walked through the brownstone district of Beacon Hill – an upmarket residential district from the 19th century, that wouldn't have looked out of place in London or York.

Whilst we waited for Chris to get out of his meeting, we wandered around the upmarket boutiques of Newbury Street (Boston's version of Bond Street or 5th Avenue), and we also popped our head into the Boston Public Library to see its impressive Reading Room.

Then, Chris took us up to his office on the 56th storey (of the 60 storey building) to admire the panoramic views over Boston from its tallest building. Unfortunately, the fog that had spoiled the views in New York had followed us up the New England coast, and visibility was not very good. Every now and again, the fog lifted and we could glimpse the golden dome of the State House glinting at us, and then it would descend on us again.

So, we caught the subway across town to have lunch and a couple of drinks at the Boston College Club at the top of another skyscraper, to see if the views were any better – it was like someone had hung a white sheet over the window. This meant that it was time to give up on the views and concentrate on catching up and having a few drinks. Time flew by and before we knew it, we were literally running across town to get the last shuttle. By now, panic was beginning to set in (this ship won't wait for Destination Lecturers who are missing in action), so we hailed a cab and told him to put his foot down.

As it turned out, we got to the ship a good 20 minutes before departure time, to be greeted by an announcement that we'd be sailing an hour late while the refuelling was completed. A whole lot of stress and an overpriced cab fare for nothing – but still a great day of catching up with family.

October 4th – New Jersey’s Edison Museum

As we were re-joining the ship in Bayonne in the early afternoon, it wasn't worth heading into Manhattan, so we stayed close to Lesley's and headed to the Edison Museum in West Orange.

Pretty much all I knew about Edison was that he invented the lightbulb (made me wonder if a lightbulb could have gone off in his head at the point he invented it?); and, to be honest, a trip to his factory sounded like it had the potential to fairly boring. I couldn't have been more wrong – I hadn't realised how many things he invented, or how advanced an industrial operation he set up. The whole tour really got us in touch with the industrial revolution and with the incredible amount of innovation there was back then.

Edison was obviously a genius, but the thing that came through to us was that he was someone who constantly questioned things, and who was incredibly persistent – he wasn't afraid to make hundreds or even thousands of unsuccessful attempts at something, as long as it got him closer to achieving his goal – just about the exact opposite of me!

At the end of our trip, we went to lunch with Lesley, and she kindly took us to the ship to continue with our North America odyssey. As one piece of solace for the embarking passengers who were disappointed not to be sailing out of Manhattan – the fog was so thick that we wouldn't have been able to see anything anyway.

October 3rd – New York’s Lower East Side

Today we headed over to the Lower East Side, the place where most immigrants went to live after passing through Ellis Island. Back in the 19th century, as millions of immigrants passed through, the Lower East Side became the most densely populated place on the planet, and its tenement buildings became home to way more people than they were ever intended to hold.

These days, the area's been gentrified to some extent, so it wasn't difficult to find a nice place for brunch, before we headed over to the Tenement Museum. The museum is housed in a crumbling 5-storey tenement that had been totally sealed up between the 1930s and the 1980s, when it was turned into the fascinating museum it is today. Each floor consisted of 4 "apartments" – 1 tiny bedroom, a small kitchen (with no running water), and a living room – which would have housed families of up to 10 people. This one was considered upmarket, because it had 3 outside toilets (which actually fed into the public sewer) in its tiny yard.

The whole thing was done extremely well – our tour focused on an Irish family who lived there in the late 19th century, and took you through the practicalities of their daily lives. Life must have been fairly hellish for people in the tenements, and I guess that it was as good an incentive as any for people to work hard, and to save enough money to get the hell out of there. Even though "our" particular family only had three children, the youngest child died of malnutrition.

After the museum, we saw the other side of the American Dream, as we travelled uptown to the iconic Chrysler Building, where our friend's company has an office on the 67th floor (the building has 70 floors. It was a real privilege to be inside this art deco masterpiece, in the top section where the building begins to narrow to its point – and it was amazing to see that the windows just open up like regular windows (we all instinctively took a big step back as soon as our friend opened the window!). Sadly, it was a drizzly day, so the views weren't as spectacular as they could have been, nonetheless, the views over New York's muscular set of skyscrapers was fairly unrivalled.

We were now ticking off New York icons like crazy, so our next stop was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to see some of the art that Tracy is studying on her history of art course. On the ground floor, we came across the collection of one of the Lehman Brothers – when you saw the unbelievable array of masterpieces that he'd amassed, it wasn't difficult to see why his bank eventually went bankrupt.

So, we soaked up the culture for as long as possible before we got thrown out at closing time, then it was time for re-fueling in a happy hour at a local pub, and then a delicious hummus and falafel meal. A perfect end to a lovely day.

October 2nd – New York & Ellis Island

On the way to New York, we had a good news/bad news scenario. The bad news was that a rope had somehow got wrapped around the ship's propeller, which meant that the ship needed to go into dry dock to get it fixed. The further bad news was that we'd have to by-pass Newport to get to the dry dock in New Jersey.

However, the good news was that we would now have an extra two days to explore New York, so we got in touch with our lovely friends who live here, and they were very generously happy to put us up at a moment's notice.

Seeing as we were missing out on sailing into the city, we decided to do things the way that people used to arrive in New York, by visiting Ellis Island and sampling a bit of the immigrant experience. Just getting onto the ferry brings you in touch with the feelings of those poor bewildered immigrants as they arrived in the Land of Opportunity. Even though we'd pre-booked our tickets (which by-passed an absolutely huge queue), there was still a long line of jostling people to join and be herded along like cattle before being grunted at by some grumpy security guards.

At last, we finally got on the ferry which took us for those inspirational views of the Statue of Liberty, before taking us to Liberty Island. Somehow, Lady Liberty looks a bit smaller than you'd imagine from a distance across the harbour, but once you get up close, it looks much, much larger than you expect. For those millions of immigrants who'd taken that long, arduous and scary journey across from the Old World, the first glimpse of her must have given them such a spring in their step.

There was an excellent audio guide that took us through the story of the statue, why it was built, how it was built, and what it stands for; and then it was time for the main event, the ferry over to Ellis Island. Here there was another audio guide which did a brilliant job of bringing alive the immigrant experience, particularly when combined with the evocative black and white pictures of the anxious immigrants dressed up in their best clothes trying to convince the border guards to let them in.

We heard the stories of the inspections the immigrants were put through – particularly gruesome was the button hook that was used to flip open their eyelids inside out, to check for eye disease; and we heard the heartbreaking stories of those who were rejected for various reasons (age, illness, or unacceptable political beliefs).

Most evocative of the lot, was to walk into the huge cavernous processing hall, and to imagine the emotions of those immigrants, waiting to see if their American Dream would become a reality. We only had 3 hours before we had to get the ferry back, and we could easily have spent the whole day there – an absolutely fascinating place that really puts you in touch with the spirit of America.