I personally think Billy's Seafood would be a great lunch stop for cruise ship passengers. It's in the city market, and I always get my lobster from them (packed for delivery to my middle-of-North America friends). They have a great little restaurant that serves top-notch seafood.

The city market is a must-do. There are few markets as diverse and interesting as the Saint John one. And you can pick up your maple syrup, lobster bibs, and other souvenirs there.

The Reversing Falls is personally overrated in my book. But the Fundy Trail is BEAUTIFUL. If you decide to take a shore excursion there it will be worth it. The Fundy Trail & Fundy National Park is the longest stretch of undeveloped land left in North America. And it's stunning.

We booked with Freedom Tours when we were in Saint John for a day on a cruise. We had agreed that they would meet us at the cruise ship terminal at 8am for an 830 start. We were off the ship by 745am and found the representative from Freedom Tours waiting, however the tour guide/driver was not there yet. That was fine as we were a bit early, but we started to get concerned when at 815am the Freedom Tours rep told us he (the guide) was just filling out the paper work at the rental car agency. I was suprised because all of the emails I exchanged with Freedom Tours led me to believe that they had their own vehicles. In any case, after another 5 or 10 minutes the Freedom Tours representative put is in a taxi and paid for us to meet the guide at the rental car agency. When we got there, he was just arriving (in other words, he was definately NOT there at 815am filling out paper work, but instead pulled in at 835am at the rental car agency). We did get a nice van (there were four of us), but again I was suprised when he said that we were early. I double checked the email correspondance I had with Freedom tours, and it definately said an 830am start so I asked him why he thought we were early. He said that he was told we were not starting the tour until 930am! Anyway, needless to say the tour got off to a rocky start. Once the tour actually started, the guide (Mike) was really good. A lot of good information and extra tid-bits. He even brought us rubber boots so that we could cross over a little stream to get some great photos. We beat all of the tour buses to the chosen destinations so it was not crowded. Overall, it was a good tour but the morning was so disorganized that I would not recommend this tour company.

We had a wonderful tour of Saint John and the Fundy Trail provided by Mr. Roy Flowers, an independent cab driver with his own six passenger van. Mr. Flowers was waiting for us as promised when we got off the ship and he made sure we got back to the ship on time. He is well organized and dependable. He is very knowledgeable of the area since he is a resident of Saint John and he conveys the pride he feels for his community. He will take you to the major attractions or will customize his tour to your specifications. He charges $50 per hour regardless of the number of passengers in the van. Mr. Flowers can be contacted at royscab@hotmail.com.

I wasn't that impressed with the Reversing Falls. You can see the change of the water's flow direction during the high tide and the low tide. However, watching it for 10 minutes while taking pictures kind of sums it up.

You have to make sure you visit it twice, during the low tide and during the high tide to see the changes.

The local tourist office supplies visitors with a leaflet with four walking tours in the city. I started the "Loyalist" walking tour, which was nice.