St Johns, Newfoundland, Colorful City on the Edge of North America!

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

So long Lockston Path Provincial Park with your black flies, boil water order, and gravel wilderness road! We were heading for the big city of St Johns. Greg was able to confirm that the packages of credit cards had arrived at Fed Ex in St Johns, so we put off the gannet colony and drove six km out the other end of the gravel road. Near there was the town of Trinity. We took a detour to drive through it. This is one of the towns that was used to film “The Shipping News” with Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Kate Blanchett and Judi Dench. It was based on an Annie Proulx story. She summers in Newfoundland and winters in the Southwest.



Trinity has gone from a fishing village to a destination with a theater, restaurants and B&B's. When we got there we realized that we had seen it and the lighthouse from the Skerwink Trail on Sunday. The streets are narrow, and we didn't want to walk around, so we took a quick ride through, looked at the quaint buildings and got back on the highway.

Newfoundland Flag

Trinity

Trinity Light with the Skerwink Trail beyond

Power poles are founded in baskets of rocks in bogs

We drove off the Bonavista Peninsula and back onto the Trans-Canada Highway heading east. In Clarenville we discovered a Sobey's grocery store and stocked up on some produce and dairy. Since it's a Nova Scotia chain, it had the same products, and surprisingly similar prices. A stop at a province run liquor store was interesting, too. There is only one Newfoundland craft brewery, Quidi Vidi, named for a lake and fishing village near St Johns. It's pronounced, “kiddividi” which reminds me of a short name for a kids video! There are only two wineries and both produce fruit wines. Grapes don't seem to grow here. Some of the wines are blended with grapes that must be shipped from off island. The berries; blueberries, strawberries, cranberries, bakeapple berries, raspberries, and rhubarb (not a berry), are mostly wild berries, hand picked locally. The Auk Island Winery also creates wine made from iceberg water. Quidi Vidi has an iceberg water beer. We bought two types of beer to try and three tiny bottles of fruit wine to sample. We passed on the Screech, which is a traditional Newfoundland rum. Drinking that and kissing a cod are two things that tourists are supposed to experience. We'll pass on both, thank you!

Wildflowers along the road to St. Johns

TCH - Trans Canadian Highway west of St. Johns

Local produce

St Johns is as far east as we can go. It is a city of 190,000 and the capital of Newfoundland. It's 500 years old, and was fought over many times between the British and the French. It has a beautiful natural harbor and a lively arts and music scene. Water Street in the old downtown is the oldest street in North America. St Johns suffered many fires over the centuries and the last near the end of the 1890's took out most of the downtown, so the buildings post-date that time.


We, however, needed to find the FedEx warehouse in the modern suburbs during rush hour. After several tries, and missing street signs, we were able to find it. Mission accomplished! We now have current Master Cards and ATM cards. Plastic helps us to avoid carrying much Canadian cash, and lets us use compatible ATMs without an extra fee.


Our next task was to find Pippy Park in the middle of the city. They had a site in their campground and we pulled in close to the wash house. Yay! Showers! We didn't want to chance black fly bites in hard to scratch places by using the showers at the Provincial Park. With the above average temperatures the last few days, we felt the need for cleanliness! When we checked in we got information on the buses and discovered that we could catch the #10 bus a short walk away at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, or MUN. Once downtown we could catch the brand new trolley service and travel around there and up to Signal Hill.


Wednesday morning we took our time getting ready and walked in the comfortable temperatures to the bus stop. The heat and humidity had cleared out and the temperature was about 60 degrees when we set out. A short walk brought us to the student center and very soon a #10 bus arrived. Greg asked where to get off downtown for the trolley and the driver told him any stop on Water Street. We had a pamphlet with the route and saw that we might have to drive the route a bit before the bus headed downtown. Off the bus went into the suburbs and into the areas we had been in the day before looking for FedEx. We drove through the mall parking lot we passed before. People got on and off. An hour later we were back at MUN where we had gotten on. The bus driver neglected to tell Greg that we should have waited for the next bus that was heading on to the downtown part of the route! I asked him if it was going downtown next and he said yes. So we finally got to the downtown.


Since it was now going on 1 PM, we decided to postpone the trolley and get some lunch. The bus driver let us off in front of the Yellowbelly Pub and Brewery on Water Street. We were put at a table by the front window and we could watch the parade of people passing by while we had lunch. We both tried one of their microbrews and Greg ordered fish and chips. They were all out! So he had a delicious salmon club sandwich instead. I had a huge plate of vegetarian nachos.

Out of Fish and Chips! A Salmon Bacon Club will hold me.

The Yellowbelly Brewery

We came out onto busy Water Street and had to figure out where to get the trolley. There were small symbols on the bus stop signs, but the schedule and locations were difficult to figure out. The trolley seemed to hit the stops once every hour. We wanted to ride it to the end of the line at Signal Hill then catch it again and work our way back into the downtown. We realized that we would be stuck at Signal Hill for an hour, and didn't know if we needed less or more time to see it. So, we started walking up Water Street while keeping our eyes open for the trolley, which turned out to look just like the city buses. It got later as we walked and we realized that there were only two hours left for the trolley to run, and it was going to cost us $5 a piece to ride. We decided to walk around the downtown on our own.


We walked up George Street which is the center of the Newfoundland music scene. Then we walked along the waterfront and debated whether the ships we saw were being loaded up to supply Labrador. We found a music store and while Greg searched for a Stan Rodgers CD, I talked to the clerk. We had discovered Stan Rodgers when we camped along the coast of Nova Scotia in Canso. They hold a Stan Rodgers Folk Festival to commemorate his death in a plane crash in 1977. He was very popular in Atlantic Canada, and sang wonderful sea shantys and songs about life in Canada. I decided to purchase a CD with traditional Newfoundland songs on it. One song “Wave Over Wave”, a song about a man who is happiest at sea, was familiar and I asked the clerk about it. It has been recorded by many groups and is one of the best known and most popular Newfoundland songs. He told me that he had been touring in Tasmania, the large island off the southern coast of Australia and walked into an Irish bar. They were playing “Wave Over Wave”. I asked him if he started to cry and he said he did, but he'd also been drinking, but yes, he cried! Traditional music is such a large part of the culture of Atlantic Canada, and especially Newfoundland.

George Street - the music block

Water Street

At the bottom of the sign - Seal.

A local freight ferry leaving the harbor for Labrador

Signal Hill on the left - the harbor opening is only 200 feet

Newfoundland dog statue 1 1/2 times normal

Fred's Record Shop

It started getting hotter, and then even though it was sunny, it began to rain. Greg looked at the map and suggested we walk back to Pippy Park. It looked doable, and he was getting “city fatigue”. We visited our first Tim Horton's for drinks to prepare us to walk back. Tim Horton's is a Canadian institution. It's a fast food restaurant chain that competes with McDonalds. Canadians love and joke about their Tim Horton's. In a litter free country, the only litter you see are Tim Horton coffee cups along the road!

We climbed the hill up from the harbor, walked through the neighborhoods with their colorful wood sided houses, and on to the city wide system of trails. This one brought us out next to MUN. We circled a small lake and returned to the campground. Yay! Showers again! Just hot and humid enough with the steep hill climbing to earn one.

Looking back at the harbor

Townhouses on the way up the hill

The walking path - The Grand Concourse

I stayed up watching the local news. We were in the city so we had reception. Newfoundland news is full of interviewers and interviewees with various dialects and accents. I find it really interesting to hear the regional differences, but I can't identify the regions. Every small fishing village seems to have its own unique way of speaking. Up until recent history the only way in and out of the coastal villages was by boat, so every village developed their own way of speaking. There is actually a “Dictionary of Newfoundland and Labrador”, to help understand the meaning of various words, but that doesn't help in understanding the accents!


Tomorrow we leave St Johns, but not before a quick visit to Signal Hill!