I was really sad to be leaving the Fishers Loft Inn. It's a week later and I still wish I was there!
But we pressed onward, south in the general direction of St. John's. Here is a town we stopped in. Ben laughed about this constantly for three or four days prior.
The Dildo Area Interpretation Center was closed, thank goodness, because I would have felt like a real jerk going in there solely to see if they had some hilarious things to buy that said "Dildo" on them. You do have to wonder what they are thinking with that map of the harbor, though, right? I mean, come on.
Apparently there are ongoing discussions about changing the name but the old timers are resisting. I guess it probably does boost tourism for the area?
We stayed our last night in Newfoundland at The Spaniard's Room Bed & Breakfast in Spanish Bay, about an hour north of St. John's. This B&B has absolutely spectacular reviews and looked great from the outside, a huge old historic house.
Inside, though, it definitely tended more toward homey than luxurious. There is a sign asking you to take your shoes off when you come indoors, they have a friendly little dog running around, and they didn't give us a key or anything. It was truly like being a guest in someone's home.
We quickly figured out that The Spaniard's Room has an excellent reputation because its owners are absolutely fantastic hosts. They were both really friendly and offered suggestions about the area, and also asked if we'd like to have dinner there, as they had just gotten some Atlantic lobsters they'd be willing to cook for us. Well, that sounded pretty great! We went for it.
In the meantime, though, we headed over to the nearby small town of Brigus, and had lunch at The Country Corner, a little combination souvenir shop/restaurant/ice cream store. I got the cod chowder special, which was stellar. Perfectly on a cold windy day.
Ben got a turkey sandwich and split pea soup.
And then we both got one of these, which was probably excessive: blueberry crumble with blueberry ice cream and blueberry sauce. Yum.
After lunch we set out to explore Brigus a little bit. This is the town hall, which was across the street from the restaurant.
Here is a view of the harbor, which some nearby signs claimed was once the busiest in Newfoundland. You could supposedly walk from one side of the harbor to the other on top of the fishing boats.
It was a really cold day. Not just windy and rainy, as other days had been, but genuinely straight up cold. Here is Benjamin cowering in a tunnel that some rich guy made his minions blast out of the solid rock for him, so he could have a shortcut from his house to the harbor.
I made him keep walking around, though, to see the sights.
This is the main tourist attraction in town, polar explorer Bob Bartlett's house. It was not yet open for the season.
We drove a few miles over to Cupids to see what was going on there. Fortunately the archaeological site was open - Cupids was the first English settlement in Canada, and is second only to Jamestown as the oldest in North America. It was first settled in 1610 and the site is an active archaeological dig. Here is the little house that serves as the visitors center.
We didn't do the full tour because Ben was too cold to stay outside but we talked with one of the historical society people for a while and it was really interesting. In addition to telling us about the history of the site, she also had about the craziest accent we had heard yet, among other things pronouncing chimney like "chimley", which took us a minute or so to figure out. I googled it later and apparently it is a regional dialect thing primarily from some very small part of England. So I guess we know where that lady's ancestors are from!
After Cupids we got some coffee at Tim Horton's and read the internet on our phones for a while (not pictured).
Then we went back to the B&B for dinner. Look at the lobsters!
We were pretty excited. The guy said he cooked them in sea water, not just tap water with salt added. I asked if he got the sea water when he bought the lobsters and he said, "oh, no, I just went across the street and collected it with a bucket." Okay, well, that's awesome.
He gave us a bunch of instructions and tips on how to eat the lobsters. Ben did most of the disassembly work.
We also got a salad and then apple crumble for dessert, and for all of that they charged us the outrageous price of $22 US per person. It was such a good deal I almost felt bad! The Spaniard's Room is definitely a keeper.
No comments:
Post a Comment