I had the idea to take two one-week trips this year rather than one longer one, both scheduled over holiday weeks, in order to maximize our traveling without having to use a bunch of vacation time. Ben was on board with this plan. So then we had to decide where to go.
I immediately became annoyed by how expensive flights are to Europe this year. We were going to have to exceed our most expensive airfare ever by a not insignificant margin to go to Paris, which is where I had my heart half-set on initially. So I started looking elsewhere. Nova Scotia? I mentioned this to my internet friends and someone suggested Newfoundland instead. That seemed like an interesting idea! I had never considered going to Newfoundland before. The General Googling phase quickly evolved into the Obsessive Planning Phase, and three months later, we were on a plane.
We had a long layover on Toronto. Look at this delicious airport pizza!
After our long layover we got on the plane and then sat there for 2 hours while they tried to figure out why the air conditioning would not work. As you might expect, this was an extremely trying 2 hours. This was my view.
Eventually they decided it could not be fixed and we had to switch to another plane. GREAT JOB, AIR CANADA. We were finally off to St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland and the only city of any real size (100,000ish) on the island.
We landed in extremely thick fog. Eerie! We picked up the car and then tried to find our B&B, Cantwell House. The aforementioned extremely thick fog and the fact that it was close to midnight made this kind of a task, but we managed to find it after only one wrong turn. That Triposo app we used in Spain saved us in Canada as well!
I had read online that there was a great view from the 3rd floor and of course the internet never lies. This was the fogged-in view of the city upon our arrival.
Our room was on the 3rd floor, and I was initially dismayed to discover it was not en suite - we had to share a bathroom with the other room on the floor. I forgot to ask about that when I booked everything! Oh well.
It all ended up working out great, though, because for the 3 nights we stayed at the Cantwell House, nobody else was in the other 3rd floor room. We essentially had a full apartment all to ourselves up there, with this lovely sitting room being where we spent most of our time.
The sitting room led out to a patio with this view - much better during the non-fogged-in daytime!
The weather seemed so-so to us on this first day - low/mid 50s and partly cloudy. LITTLE DID WE KNOW. By the end of the trip our definition of good weather had been substantially revised.
The first thing we did on our first day in St. John's was visit The Rooms, a combination cultural, historical, and art museum wherein we learned about the history of Newfoundland. It was settled mostly by Irish fisherman in the 1800s, which is immediately obvious when you talk to anyone who's grown up there, particularly in the rural areas outside of St. John's. The accent is crazy! There were quite a few times we didn't have any idea what someone was saying and just nodded and smiled and hoped for the best.
Newfoundland was settled primarily because of the huge amounts of cod in its waters. Cod fishing was the island's only real industry for hundreds of years, going back all the way to the 1500s. The island has come upon hard times in the last several decades, though. In the early 1990s the cod stocks finally became so decimated that the Canadian government put a moratorium on the industry. There is still a small amount of fishing allowed, but there are strict quotas that fisherman have to adhere to and most have turned to other species. We ran into people talking about this everywhere we went, how it has changed the culture of the island and forced them to look to other industries to try to survive. Tourism is one, although they still have a way to go there, and there are also offshore oil rigs that have been built in the last few decades. Anyway. We found it all fascinating. It's such an insulated community, out there in the North Atlantic, and given the length and harshness of their winters and their geographic isolation, it's not hard to understand why they've had trouble adapting to a post-cod fishing economy.
But hey! Look at the size of that narwhal tusk!
The Rooms has a beautiful view of St. John's and the harbor.
St. John's is extremely cute. It seemed like every street was lined with these brightly colored old fashioned houses.
This is Water Street, the oldest street in North America. It was first developed in the early 1500s. That's so old!
We stopped at a pub for lunch called The Duke of Duckworth. I got a bacon cheeseburger.
Ben got fish & chips. We ate a lot of fish & chips on this trip.
The French fries at this place had a very slight sweet flavor and we were briefly excited wondering if there was a weird Newfoundland potato that was different from other potatoes. Later meals proved this theory wrong, however. They must have just used coconut oil or some other kind of flavoring to get the sweet taste.
After lunch we drove up to Signal Hill National Historic Site, which you can see in the pictures from our B&B balcony. It has been fortified and manned throughout many wars over the years - due to Newfoundland's position as the most eastern part of North America everybody spent a few hundred years fighting over it once the Europeans started settling there. It is also famous for being the site where the first transatlantic wireless transmission was received.
From Signal Hill we spotted our first icebergs! I had not really understood that icebergs were a thing in Newfoundland until a couple weeks before we left, and then I read that late May is the prime iceberg spotting time, and THEN I found out that this year has been an extremely active year. Excitement! Anyway, we were pumped to see this iceberg.
We took a self-portrait with it. It's up there in that overexposed area, I swear.
The views of St. John's Harbor are fantastic from up there!
The other side of the hill, looking out to sea.
We ended up hiking around in the hills for a couple of hours or so. There are a lot of trails up there and the views are stunning. We spotted another iceberg!
There were these little cairns in one spot, sort of a creepy scene.
We also saw a bald eagle's nest! When we first arrived there were two eagles but one of them flew off by the time we got down to this overlook. There were little grey babies wandering around in the nest!
Yeah. It's that iceberg.
For dinner we went to The Sprout, a much recommended vegetarian restaurant. We got artichoke dip to start and it was actually made of artichokes, not just cheese with some token artichoke flakes. It was delicious! We were definitely in need of some nice vegetables after that pub lunch.
Ben ordered an open faced grilled cheese pesto sandwich.
I got miso noodles with vegetables and tofu. It was great, exactly what I needed.
But then we ruined it with cake. Delicious, delicious cake.
We packed a lot into that first day in St. John's! After dinner we headed back to our luxurious apartment-like B&B situation and hung out in our living room until time for bed.
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