CRUISE VIGNETTES 30, Stefan Batory

ARRIVE IN MONTREAL
We arrived at the dock in Montreal at exactly 8:00 AM, and it took three hours to get all the people unloaded and through customs. Vehicles were driven off the ship, so a crane and cable were not needed. Canadian Customs officers just glanced at our vehicle, and didn’t even look at all the luggage stored inside. We made sure our vehicle insurance was in order, found a gasoline station, then left Montreal. We spent that night in a motel in Bowmanville, Ontario. The cost was $42 US, and they had a sauna that I enjoyed. As we drove, we stopped in any town that looked interesting including London where we bought an interesting book on Cathedrals, and some candy. In Windsor Emmy spent the last of our Canadian money for a pink glass cheese dish with a lid that’s difficult to hold on to, as it’s being removed. But Emmy likes it, and that’s all that matters in such matters.

We crossed the border to the US, at Windsor, Canada. We had boxes and bags galore, filled with goodies that we had purchased all over Europe. We were concerned that the US customs at Detroit would not be familiar with such things (as they would be at international airports), and were afraid we might have a problem crossing the border.

I noticed that the US Customs agent would turn around and do some paper work each time she was done with a car, so I stayed right up almost against the car in front of us, so she couldn’t see the German license plate. When our turn came, when she turned around she saw two Americans in a Dodge who had just spent a day and a night in Canada, and we did nothing to make her think otherwise. So no problem.

We stopped in Indiana to visit family, stopped in Dallas to visit friends, stopped a dozen other places just because, as we drove towards home. When we stopped at the Fruit Inspection station at the California border, the inspector asked, “Have you been east of Phoenix,” and I said, “Oh yeah, we were in Prague, Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin, Rome, and a hundred other places.” The inspector’s jaw dropped, he waved us on without even asking if we had any fruit, which is the reason he stopped us in the first place. We wonder what he really thought about what we said.