On our second St. John's-based day, we drove out to Cape Spear, the most easterly point of North America, about 20 minutes outside of town.
Now, the road situation in St. John's and, really, the whole of the island, was something to behold. St. John's is a very old city built up piecemeal over decades and centuries, and it shows in the way the roads are laid out. Everything is very haphazard and there is seemingly no sense in who has to stop at intersections and who doesn't. And also sometimes a road will become one way for only one block and you have to figure out how to navigate around it if you want to keep going straight. And also, for a fun bonus, all the paint indicating where the lanes are was completely gone. We asked the B&B proprietor about that and she said it gets worn away every single winter and they have to repaint essentially from scratch. Finally, there were huge potholes everywhere. St. John's was actually not that bad in retrospect - the conditions in rural areas were much, much worse. So, all that is to say that the driving in Newfoundland was a little more difficult than I had imagined. Not as bad as Spain, certainly, but challenging at times. Ben did a great job, though, and we had the Triposo map to help when we got off track. We did get a little lost going out to Cape Spear but it was easily corrected and we got headed in the right direction.
It was amazing to me how we spent this trip in the most populated parts of the island, and yet 20 minutes outside of Newfoundland's busiest city could feel this isolated. The entrance to St. John's harbor is actually just to the left of center in this photo.
There it is! The very easternmost point.
There are old World War II bunkers out there. German subs actually were in the waters around Newfoundland but this post never saw any action.
There is still a working lighthouse at Cape Spear and they've also left the old historical one as it was in the 1830s so you can go inside and see how the lighthouse keeper lived. It was neat. We are nerdy. The old one is on the right - the house was built around the lighthouse itself so he had easy access without going out into the weather. Pretty smart.
I made a stranger lady take our picture. She was extremely enthusiastic and took about twelve of them.
There are trails all over the place out there that connect to the big East Coast Trail, so we hiked around for a little while. It was windy and probably in the upper 40s but it felt fine.
This is the new, working lighthouse. They had to upgrade in the 1950s due to Canadian national regulations.
These foghorns really are super loud! We heard them in several different places throughout the trip.
This is the historical lighthouse. At one point the family had 13 kids living in there.
We left Cape Spear and headed south for about an hour to Ferryland, where they do famous picnics at the lighthouse. It's really hard to get a reservation - you have to call weeks in advance during the tourist season - but naturally I called back in March and got us a spot. It was the very first day they were open for the season.
The route out to the lighthouse was on a single track gravel road right along cliffs overlooking the ocean. Fortunately we had our Scottish experience so we didn't get too freaked out, but there were a few dicey passing incidents. You have to walk the last kilometer or so.
Weirdly, we were the only sensible people who wanted to eat their picnic indoors. Everyone else was out there in the wind. No thanks! We had a nice view.
The food was fantastic! Ben got a roast beef sandwich and gingerbread for dessert and I had ham and brie and chocolate ganache cake. Plus an orzo vegetable salad for each of us and fresh-squeezed, not-too-sweet lemonade. Perfection!
After lunch we walked out onto the point in front of the lighthouse.
Benjamin is always very concerned with getting as far out onto the cliffs as possible. It makes me extremely nervous. Here he is down on some rocks.
We drove back to St. John's and spent a couple nice hours in the B&B until time for dinner. In the local indie newspaper we had read about a new place called Mohamed Ali's, St. John's first real middle eastern restaurant. He worked really hard to get it up and running and ran into all sorts of roadblocks and the lady at The Sprout told us the food was great, so we decided to go there to support small business and all that jazz. He had only opened about a month before.
So we ordered and then it took 30 minutes and we still didn't have any food. I was kind of freaking out. I politely mentioned to the lady that it had been a half hour and she looked horrified and brought us little desserts for free.
Then the food appeared about 5 minutes later. This is the kind of place where hippie kids are back there doing the cooking and we think the order just got lost or something. But anyway! It was worth the wait. I got the chicken schwarma plate and it came with delicious rice and pita and hummus.
Ben got the falafel pita, which the lady at The Sprout had specifically recommended. He said it was great.
After dinner it finally started to rain a little bit for the first time of the trip, so we headed back to the B&B. On the walk back a little kitty came to see us! We felt bad for him out in the rain but, you know, he was a cat and it's probably fine.
The fog was rolling back in!
This was our last night in St. John's and the next day we were headed out to see some of rural Newfoundland.
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