“I have lived here all my life, and every time I see a ship, I want to stop and watch,” said Nelson, the director of packaged travel for Visit Duluth, the convention and visitors bureau for Duluth, Minn.
Nelson is talking about the huge freighters — some longer than three football fields — carrying cargoes of iron, grain, coal and stone that frequent the city’s harbor. More than 1,000 oceangoing and Great Lakes freighters annually sail up the ship channel and into the Duluth harbor.
America’s port cities such as Duluth offer visiting groups a colorful panorama of 1,000-foot-long freighters, cargo ships stacked high with multicolored containers, cruise ships, naval vessels, yachts and other pleasure craft that spark a sense of wonder and excitement about faraway places across the sea or those closer to home.
Duluth, Minn.
One of the great sights in Duluth is when the aerial lift bridge, the largest of its kind on the Great Lakes, is raised to allow a ship to pass beneath it.
“The center span goes up just like an elevator, up to 285 feet,” said Gene Shaw, director of public relations for Visit Duluth. “When a ship is in and the bridge is up, it is like moths to a flame. Tourists just flock to the area.”
Located on Lake Superior, Duluth is the top volume port on the Great Lakes and the most inland port on the lakes.
“We have a lot of thousand-footers and a lot of international ships,” said Nelson. Visitors can experience the excitement of this activity along Duluth’s redeveloped waterfront.
“You can walk out on the ship piers,” said Nelson. “You are very close; you can reach out and almost touch them.”
The waterfront has shops, restaurants, an Omnimax theater, the Great Lakes Aquarium, sculptures, carriage rides and the William A. Irvin, once the flagship of U.S. Steel’s Great Lakes fleet and now part of the Great Lakes Floating Maritime Museum. The museum also has a 1944 Coast Guard buoy tender and icebreaker.
Another way to get a close-up look at the giant ships is on a harbor cruise. “They have lunch, dinner and just plain-old sightseeing cruises,” said Nelson. “They have guided tours and get close to many of the ships in port. They tell about the cargo.
“The lakefront is totally redeveloped. We have turned ourselves to look at the lake,” said Nelson. “Some have called us the Little San Francisco of the North. We are built on a hillside overlooking the lake.”
www.visitduluth.com
Seattle
Seattle’s natural deep-water harbor, Elliott Bay, is filled with a large variety of vessels set amid great natural beauty.
“We have ferries, passenger and cruise vessels, harbor cruises, all out there in Elliott Bay,” said Heather Bryant, media relations manager for the Seattle-King County Convention and Visitors Bureau. “It’s a truckin’ little piece of water.”
Great views of the busy harbor can be found along Seattle’s central waterfront along Alaskan Way, from Pier 70 on the north to Pier 48 on the south.
Along the waterfront where the ferries, cruise ships and sightseeing boats dock are shops, restaurants with harbor views and attractions such as the Seattle Aquarium atop Pier 59, with its salmon, sea otters and Pacific Northwest tide pools, and the Odyssey Maritime Discovery Center at Pier 66. At the Discovery Center, which has 44 interactive exhibits in four galleries, visitors can take a virtual kayak journey and practice loading ships with a high-tech crane simulator.
“There are a lot of places to just stand and watch,” said Bryant, who added that another way to get good views of the harbor is to climb the hill leading from the harbor to the famous Pike Place Market.
You can watch the market’s fish merchants toss their wares to customers, and you can get a great view of the harbor.
“You can really look and see the expanse of what is going on on Elliott Bay,” said Bryant.
“Look out to the west and you have the Olympic mountains; look down to the south, and there is Mount Rainier — on a clear day, mind you. If you are high enough, you get to see the water hugged by the mountains on the west and, in the distance in the south, this magnificent, huge mountain. It is quite spectacular.
“I like those early-spring days when there is still snow on top of the mountains,” said Bryant. “As the sun comes up and hits that water with its bright blue color, there is nothing more beautiful, in my opinion,”
www.visitseattle.org
Tampa, Fla.
People who fly into Tampa for a cruise are often surprised by the Gulf Coast city’s port facilities, according to Brooke Maynard, public relations manager for the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“One of the best things about our port is that it is located adjacent to our downtown,” she said. “People can fly into Tampa and, in less than a 10-minute drive, be in downtown. One thing we always hear is, people fly in, take a taxi to the cruise terminal and, ‘Wow, we are already here!’
River Street in Savannah, Ga. Courtesy Savannah CVB |
“They look around, and there are skyscrapers right behind them; they weren’t expecting that. People think of Miami or Cape Canaveral as ports and may not think of Tampa. But you can see ships pretty much anywhere in downtown. It is an awakening experience,” she said.
The area around Tampa’s main cruise terminal is well developed, with the Florida Aquarium, the state’s largest, and the Channelside development, which features movie theaters, a 3-D Imax theater, retail shops and several restaurants with live entertainment, adjacent to the terminal.
The Port of Tampa, the largest in Florida, bustles with shipments of petroleum, ammonia, phosphate, rock, scrap metal, sulfur and phosphoric chemicals, in addition to its busy schedule of human cruise passengers.
Tampa is homeport to six vessels from four cruise lines: Carnival, Holland America, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity.
The StarShip Dining Yacht makes daily lunch and evening dinner cruises of Tampa Bay from the Channelside area, and Duck Tours provides a combination water-and-land tour of the area aboard World War II Army amphibious vehicles with entertaining and wisecracking young guides.
www.visittampabay.com
Savannah, Ga.
Savannah conjures images of moss-covered trees, gardens, historic houses and landscaped public squares. But one of the most memorable scenes that groups can encounter is a large ship stacked high with freight containers gliding by just feet from the restaurant where they are eating.
Located on the Savannah River, Savannah is a thriving river port. River Street, a nine-block area of former cotton warehouses, borders the river where huge oceangoing cargo ships head into and out of the port facilities.
More than 75 boutiques, galleries, artists’ studios, restaurants and pubs are located in the restored warehouses.
Cobblestones used as ballast in sailing ships from England pave ramps and walkways.
www.savannahvisit.com
Norfolk, Va.
In March, a new $36 million, 80,000-square-foot cruise terminal with a large entrance, a waiting lounge and baggage areas will open in Norfolk, adding to the Virginia city’s reputation as one of the nation’s top ports.
“It is a big, working harbor,” said Mary Garrett, director of marketing and communications for the Norfolk Convention and Visitors Bureau. “There is a great deal of activity down at the harbor.”
Nauticus Maritime Center in Norfolk, Va. Courtesy Norfolk CVB |
More than 62,000 cruise passengers departed from Norfolk in 2006 aboard Holland America and Carnival Cruise Line ships for the Bahamas and the Caribbean.
Norfolk is also home to the largest naval base in the world, adding to the great variety of vessels in the harbor.
“It is not uncommon to see some large naval vessels, such as carriers and destroyers,” said Garrett
You can get a good view of the harbor, which teems with military vessels, pleasure craft, ferries, tugs, yachts, sailboats and huge cruise ships, from Nauticus, The National Maritime Center.
Located on the Norfolk waterfront, the distinctively shaped, multilevel Nauticus has more than 150 exhibits that explore the natural, economic and naval aspects of the world’s oceans.
The Hampton Roads Naval Museum, which covers 227 years of naval history, is located on Nauticus’ second floor.
From the naval museum, you walk across a bridge to tour the 887-foot-long USS Wisconsin, one of the largest battleships ever built by the U.S. Navy.
www.norfolkcvb.com
