By the time that we got to St. John’s, the sun was starting to peak out and we were surprised with the size of St. John’s as we entered town. After the remoteness of Nova Scotia, we were expecting St. John’s to be another quiet village – quite the opposite – it was a “big little city” with lots of high end restaurants and a late night music scene.
[Travel note – the AirBNB recommended parking was in a good spot, but our roof top box we didn’t fit in parking garages. This was second parking garage we didn’t fit and almost hit the roof on a third. This was the first clue that any type of larger vehicle created parking issues and limited options to not only park, but pull off the road for a quick hike or picture.]
Central Business District
We were now at a slower pace – we had almost 4 days/3 nights in St. John’s when normally we would have planned this as 2 day/1 night stop – so we settled in at a relaxed pace. St. John’s is a bit of a foodie town, our first night we were walking around and found a place to eat – fish and chips weren’t even on the menu (one of the two staples of this trip – the other being a lobster salad roll). I still got cod – but prepared with butter and other seasoning and very good.
For our first full day, we took the hop off/hop on business in the morning and walking tour in the afternoon which gave us the basics and lay of the land. St. John’s closed its main restaurant street (Water Street) during COVID to car traffic and keeps it closed most of the time so it is fully pedestalized. The more famous street with more per capital bars per foot than anywhere else in North America runs parallel – George Street. While Water Street was re-built following some fires than burnt most of the city and had historic brick buildings, George Street was more of a hodgepodge of different places focused on guys coming into port back in the day. We found that we fit in better on Water Street which was lower key and didn’t have cover charges (and the music wasn’t as loud!). We had just missed the big end of summer festival (first week in August) and although it didn’t look crowded to us, people said this was more people than most times of the year. One of the signature landmarks of St. John’s for tourists is “Jellybean Row” – a row of different colored row houses – reality is that there is not a single “Jellybean Row” but all throughout the old town houses were brightly painted (and now mandated by code). The legend was so that the fisherman returning could see their houses – but the most house were obstructed by the various hills, and the local guide said it was probably the leftover paint from their brightly colored boat. One activity continuously pointed out to us was to become an honorary Newfoundlander by getting “Screeched In” which entailed taking an oath in a English/Gaelic dialect, getting your feet wet, drinking a shot of bad Jamaican Rum, and kissing a cod. Most every bar had ceremonies but we didn’t get the timing right while in town and had another foodie type dinner.
Cape Spear, Bay Bulls, and Signal Hill
We had a day focused on another whale watching tour and found out the prior night (more accurately, googled the specific location for the first time ) that the port was 45 minutes away. Luckily this was near a hike I saw on youtube as well as driving back by Cape Spear which we had visited on the hop on/off bus tour. Cape Spear is the easternmost point on the North American continent and has two lighthouses as well as old WWII defensive gun fortifications.
We arrived in Bay Bulls a couple of hours before our tour – so the first order was to test the new drone before we started our hike. It cost $40, so while I was expecting less features, I didn’t realize how much. My first drone had a “auto-hover” configuration where it just stayed in one spot once it took off unless you wanted to move it. The second drone took off – immediately drifted with the wind and when I tried to manually correct, I flew it into the forest – it took a while to retrieve it and I decided to retire from drone piloting the balance of the trip. We then did a couple of mile hike on the East Coast Trail which had a lot of great overlooks.
Another glorious day for a boat trip, but the crew immediately lowered expectations in promising a lot of puffins but likely no migrating whales – especially since they saw some in the morning and unlikely to get lucky twice in one day.. This ended up being correct. I was able to get “Screeched In” on the boat ride but kissed a toy puffin and not a real cod.
St. John’s has a pretty unique port and it can be seen why this was a defensive stronghold, with Cape Spear covering the southern flank while Signal Hill protecting the northern entrance. After a quick tour around Signal Hill, we went down to the smaller harbour of Quidi Vidi – which also was the namesake for the most popular brewery in Newfoundland.
St. John’s was a great stop on our trip – and having 3 nights in one place was good as well to reset. We didn’t have a clear plan for the next three days until our next scheduled night in Gros Morne National Park – about 500 miles away – and narrowed to a few options and generally tried to schedule driving while raining.