Monday – August 6, 2018

Newfoundland

We woke pretty refreshed and in the morning had enough time for the nice breakfast buffet as the Atlantic Vision maneuvered into the harbor in Argentia Newfoundland.  We could immediately see it looked different with rugged rocky characteristics.  There was a lot of exposed rock so the soil was thin in many areas.

The disembarking procedure moved along pretty quickly and we were on the road to St. John’s.  We did see the welcome sign for Newfoundland which we didn’t see going to PEI and Nova Scotia so that’s why I skipped my usual pictures of them.

We did a quick stop at the nearby visitor center and it wasn’t long before some black flies found us and went looking to dive deep in our hair.  We quickly hit the road to St. John’s.  The topography of Newfoundland was definitely different than what we saw thus far.  There is a quite a bit of exposed rock as the soil is quite thin in many areas.  This means the trees can be somewhat stunted in many places.  Newfoundland is sometimes referred to as “The Rock” and it is easy to see why.

St. John’s

The downtown of St. John’s is dominated by the sheltered harbor that was a key to it’s growth as an early center of commerce.  Today it is still busy with ships and shipping.  The entire downtown runs along its edge.

We parked the car and took a walk looking for some lunch.  I had been talking about getting poutine on this trip so we walked into a Smoke’s Poutine store which is kind of a McDonald’s of poutine.  I got mine kicked up with some spicy toppings and sauces but overall I wasn’t a big fan.  I think part of it was the unhealthiness of the ingredients and partly just don’t care for the combination of it all.

We decide we would head to the hotel afterward.  This place was the Gower Guest House (no relation to Mr. Gower of “It’s a Wonderful Life”!) – its just on Gower Street.   The streets in St. John’s rise up quickly from the harbor and once you get a couple blocks back it becomes residential.  Gower Street is a few blocks back from Harbour Drive and is lined with clapboard houses painted in bright colors.  They are called “jelly bean” houses as they echo the colors of the candy.  You might think this is some long standing tradition dating from the mists of history but this was actually some creative thinking among community leaders from the 1970’s to boost awareness of the city.

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We climbed up to the 4th floor of the guest house and found ourselves sitting around and feeling tired from the previous days traveling.  Next we knew it turned into a multi-hour nap.  Maybe it was a poutine coma?  We headed out to do some quick sightseeing and went to Signal Hill which overlooks the city and harbor entrance.  It is also famous for being the place that Marconi received the first radio signals from Europe.  We found that it was shrouded in fog and getting worse so decide it was best deferred to morning.

That made it time to head for dinner and we went to the area of George St.  This area has wall to wall pubs and restaurants so it is easy to find something you like.

We found the Adelaide Oyster House which was loud but had fun vibe.  They say at this place “some people say we are loud but we say we are lively”.  It certainly was both of those things, and they did play the music quite loud, but it sounded really good out of the excellent set of speakers.  The food was creative and well prepared.  I had delicious buttery smooth oysters with a side of house made spicy kimchi. Debbie really liked her yellowfin tuna made into something like a salsa.  I found some brews from the Port Rexton Brewing that I really liked including a T-Rex Porter and Blue Steel Sour.  We do like eating (and drinking) our way through our travels!  We called it a night and headed back to Gower St.

Today we drove only 87 miles over 2 hours and 5 minutes for a trip total of 1301 miles.    The water total is still at 377 miles and 17 1/4 hours.