About 1,200 miles southeast of Newfoundland in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (900 miles west of Portugal) is an archipelago of nine major islands known as the Azores.  Though isolated, the name of this island group is well known to many Americans because of a poem that was often required reading in grade school textbooks during the twentieth century.  “Behind him lay the gray Azores” was the first line of a poem Uncle Ralph memorized in school and used to recite for Laetitia when she was small.  Hoosier-born poet, Cincinnatus Heine Miller (penname: Joaquin Miller), wrote the poem, Columbus, in 1892, 400 years after the first Columbian voyage.

Discovered (or rediscovered) by Portuguese ship captains sailing for Prince Henry the Navigator, these islands belong to Portugal.  Laetitia decided to tour only one island on this first visit.  She chose Faial.  Horta, the small island’s harbor city is a favorite port of call for sailing yachts crossing the Atlantic.  After an island tour, Laetitia and her group did a harbor-side walk, viewing the sailboats from all over the world.  Then they visited Peter Café Sport, a waterfront establishment that opened in 1918, famous for its scrimshaw museum and its gin and tonics served in mugs.  It also serves as a post office of sorts where yachters leave mail for their sailing friends.

On Faial, Peter Café Sport, a
Bar favorite of yachters in port, a
Place known for scrimshaw
And gin tonics that awe,
A must-see in harbor-side Horta

Cape Breton, in Canada’s Province of Nova Scotia was the day’s destination.  Laetitia and her group spent the morning in Baddeck at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site.  After the telephone that Bell invented became a commercial success, he built a mansion in the area where he and his wife, Mable, raised their children.  There he continued scientific pursuits as inventor and entrepreneur.  His pioneering research in aviation and his founding of the National Geographic Society are much less well known than his work with the telephone.  Later, they took a cruise on a schooner that offered excellent views of the Bell mansion and nesting bald eagles.

They spent the afternoon at the Fortress of Louisbourg.  Built by the French in the early eighteenth century, the citadel changed hands several times.  General James Wolfe was second-in-command of an English expedition that captured Louisbourg in 1759.  Later in the same year, he commanded the British Forces that sailed up the Saint Lawrence River and defeated the French at Quebec.  Laetitia and her group had the good fortune to hear a performance by the Men of the Deeps, a male choral ensemble whose members are former coal miners from the area.  The occasion for the concert of traditional music was the dedication of one of the reconstructed Fort Louisbourg buildings.

They had dinner at the A & K Lick-A-Chick Restaurant in Little Bras D’or near Sydney. This diner-style forty-years-old establishment features superb fried chicken and excellent hamburgers as well as double entendre.  It became the subject of Laetitia’s limerick of the day.

In Cape Breton, the home of the miner
There’s the A & K Lick-A-Chick diner
That serves burger in bun
Fried chicken and pun
That loyal fans say couldn’t be finer.