Travel YMT blog

One of the best vacations is a tour and cruise combination. It’s the best of both worlds: a chauffeured motor coach ride to places you want to visit, and a pampered-beyond-the-meaning-of-luxurious cruise. There are any number of combinations of places to see on land combined with fabulous ports of call. One such popular trip is a tour and cruise of the northeast, beginning in Boston.

You’ve always wanted to see Boston—and Bar Harbor, and Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and the Saguenay Fjord and…. Wait—that’s too many choices, too much driving, and a lot of planning. So why not let YMT Vacations do all the work for you?

We’ve set up the cruise, arranged for comfortable motor coaches, reserved the hotels, and set up a sightseeing route that includes all the most popular places and things to see.

Our 15-Day Northeast Cruise and Tour starts in Boston with a city tour that includes many of the historic sites, including the Freedom Trail which takes visitors past 16 historical sites, all linked with a red brick or painted line. Then the tour continues to the Port of Boston where you board a Holland America Cruise Line ship, the ms Maasdam for a luxury cruising experience you’ll never forget.

You visit Bar Harbor, Maine, set amid the Atlantic ocean and surrounded by Acadia National Park. Continue your “down east” adventure in Halifax, Nova Scotia where you can enjoy museums, art galleries, churches, sidewalk cafes and the beautiful waterfront. Then get to know Sydney, Nova Scotia, a wave-carved region where the historic blends beautifully with the modern. In New England-style Charlottetown, Price Edward Island, you enter a Victorian world created by Lucy Maud Montgomery’s famous book, Anne of Green Gables. Tour Green Gables house, play golf, stroll the boardwalk or see “Anne of Green Gables—The Musical.”

Legend tells of a mythical kingdom where riches were to be found, when in truth, the Saguenay Fjord is an awesome, mystical place where the St. Lawrence River joins the sea, attracting beautiful and rare marine life. As you cruise this awesome place, watch for lush coastal rain forests, glacial peaks and whales cavorting in the dark blue water.

It’s back to civilization with a stop in lovely Quebec City. This French-speaking town draws the visitor with its gabled houses, leafy parks and historic aura. As you leave shipboard life behind, you can look forward to a city tour of Montreal, nicknamed a “Paris of the Americas” for a very good reason: it has the largest concentration of pre-20th Century buildings in North America. Stroll cobblestone streets, enjoy a beverage at an outdoor café with European flavor or visit a shop filled with the latest Paris fashions.

Sit back and relax as French Canada fades from view as you cross the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains through breathtaking Adirondack State Park on your way to Philadelphia. After a tour of a Hyde Park Mansion in New York, you’ll find a tour of Philadelphia reveals this “City of Brotherly Love” as a green and historic place. As you tour the “Cradle of Democracy” you get a deep sense of the sacrifices this country’s founding fathers made to form our great country.

Prepare yourself for a little excitement—a tour of “The Big Apple” is next. As you take in the sights—Central Park, Fifth Avenue, the United Nations Building—of this busy city that never sleeps, you may come to understand the phrase, “New York minute.” The next day, take a drive long the Atlantic coast through Connecticut and back to Boston, completing a fantastic trip.