Cruising Through North America’s Magnificent Inland Seas!
THE GREAT LAKES
July 18 - 25, 2009
Aboard the All-Suite, 100-Guest Clelia II

One of the great summertime idylls is once again close at hand. In 2009, we are pleased to revive the luxurious Great Lakes cruise—the créme-de-la-créme of American holidays a half-century ago. With vistas of lonely lighthouses on cliff tops, lush forested islands, Victorian villages, and Niagara Falls, it’s an ideal way to enjoy the pleasures of a grand voyage without having to venture far from home.

You may remember your own distant summers on Lake Michigan, or the clip-clop of horses on Mackinac Island. We invite you to refresh both your memory, and the memory of this - our continent. On the fresh waters where seagulls cry and lighthouses blink, renew the memory of the New orld, where Champlain and Cartier first reached their Great Lake shores in the 17th century, and, scanning the blue horizon for land, drank it all in. Aboard the elegant, 100-guest, all-suite Clelia II, we will recall their voyages as we journey through the history of North America, of the making of the United States and Canada as nations—all while admiring dramatic natural wonders and feats of human engineering.

We will begin in Toronto, enjoying magnificent views of the city’s iconic architecture as we depart. Amidst the monumental endeavor of the Welland Canal, which opened the entire Great Lakes region to intercontinental commerce, we’ll delight in the awesome thunder and spray of Niagara Falls.

We’ll sail past the skyline of Detroit, then experience the unique traditions of the Ojibwe people, who still hold their ancestral lands of Manitoulin Island as the only First Nations tribe never to cede title to their lands.

The centerpiece of our week on the vast sweet waters is Mackinac Island. Horse-drawn carriages will roll us through perfectly preserved 19th-century lanes towards the colonnaded porch of the Grand Hotel; we’ll then witness musket firing demonstrations at Fort Mackinac, built by the British during the American Revolution. Look up, as we sail away, to the soaring expanse of the Mackinac Bridge.

On the Keweenaw Peninsula, we’ll survey 150-year-old ruins of smelting works from the Great Copper Rush while rambling through bucolic towns and mossy forests before continuing to Thunder Bay, where a British fort beneath the Sleeping Giant headland awaits our inspection.

Three centuries ago, hunters and trappers discovered the wealth of the Great Lakes. One-and-a-half centuries ago, miners gleaned the hills here. From 1900 to 1950, the Great Lakes were the premier vacation spot for Americans. Experience what we’ve forgotten—aboard the elegant, newly refurbished, all-suite Clelia II—all so close to home.

From $3,735 + air.