NEWFOUNDLAND – ST. JOHN’S.
Day 56 – It’s the first day of summer and the longest day of the year. It sure doesn’t feel like summer here, although it has gotten warmer some days, it’s still in the 40’s at night. The days have been quite long for awhile now. I’ve heard that daylight hours begin decreasing rapidly here after today.
Today was foggy, windy, and cold. A good day to go into St. John’s. Looking online to find a health food store and a decent-sized grocery store, and then looking at maps, it seemed a bit overwhelming to try to find things without having any idea about the large city. We didn’t know enough about St. John’s to have any idea what things would be good to see & visit. We found a tour bus company with good reviews, so we called them and were unexpectedly able to book a tour for this afternoon. They had everything from personal tours to a 7-person tour to a 12-person tour to a full-size bus tour with lots of people. The one that was available this afternoon was in a van that held seven people including the driver/tour guide. That sounded perfect to us. We wanted something small but not so personal that it would be overly expensive. The company was called Legend Tours. The guide said for us to be at the St. John’s Sheraton Hotel at 1:45 p.m. He said parking in the city was impossible and they had a deal with Sheraton’s that customers could park in their lot. We rushed out the door and headed for St. John’s, using the GPS to get us to the health food store and the grocery store.
St. John’s was 35 minutes from our campground. We had only a couple of hours to drive there, do all the shopping, drive back to the RV and put everything up, eat lunch, and drive back to the Sheraton. We made it only a little behind schedule. There was only one other customer on the tour with us, a man from Quebec City who spoke French and was travelling by motorcycle. Our tour guide was very good. Pictures follow with the highlights of our tour. The tour lasted between 3 ½ and 4 hours. It was very foggy, so we couldn’t see things in the distance very well. But his stories helped fill in the visual gaps.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
The historic & quaint fishing villages of Petty Harbour and Quidi Vidi were both fairly close to St. John’s and included extremely beautiful harbours; very narrow, scenic & winding streets; old colorful houses & fishing shacks; and each had a restaurant that was highly recommended to us. Quidi Vidi had a restaurant in one of the oldest homes in the area – Mallard Cottage – even without the recommended meal, it was supposedly a place to tour. Petty Harbour’s restaurant, Chafe’s Cafe, was recommended by 3 different people we came across because the owner served the fish he’d caught that day. We chose Chafe’s Cafe in lovely Petty Harbour. This village is a must-visit for anyone who comes here, for its harbour and colorful streets & homes. And if you want fresh cod that melts in your mouth, come here! But you do need reservations at both popular restaurants. We walked in and they were packed. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time and got a table within 10 minutes. We could see the line of people waiting clear out into the parking lot the entire time we were there.
We finally tried our Fish & Chips the Newfoundland way: they don’t eat their fries plain like we do in the States. They either have them Poutine style – covered with a brown gravy and cheese curds (we have not brought ourselves to try this yet), or served with “dressing & gravy”. Our tour guide said we must try this so we did. But we asked for it on the side so we could put our own amount on the fries. The dressing was not a salad dressing or something like that. (I’d wanted to ask her what kind of dressing do you have, thinking that Bleu Cheese dressing on fries, hold the gravy, would be delicious!) No, the dressing was a Sage Stuffing Dressing like what you’d typically have at Thanksgiving with your turkey. You put that on your fries and then cover it all with Brown Gravy. So we tried it. It wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t that good either. It was just odd. And it was so filling. that neither of us could finish our food. I promise you that we will not try these other traditional NF favorite: Cod Tongues (fried), Scrunchions (cubes of pork back fat, fried), Flipper Pie (made with real seal flippers), Fish & Brewis (salt cod & hard tack, boiled with scrunchions added), Moose Meat Stew (need I say more), We will, however, try two fruits – partridgeberry and bakeapples.
Definitely the cutest part of the day was the mamma Sea Gull on the nest on the roof of a house trying to get her disobedient baby chick to come back to the nest. Just adorable. It was a long day & the girls had been disobedient themselves while we were gone. Probably angry & bored from being alone so long during the day, we came home to find one of my shoes (flip-flops) tossed into the litter box and the other one in the middle of the living room floor; my sweatshirt was balled up on the floor at the foot of the bed; and my sweatpants were on top of the floor heater, all warm from where someone had been sleeping on it. We will make it up to them, LOL.