Our Trip to St. John's, Newfoundland

Hi All,

Jeff and I are back from St. John's. We were there from Sunday to Thursday (yesterday) so we are pretty tired today. It was a great trip. The conference went very well and my paper seemed to go over well with the right people so that is always good. We also got to do some actual touristy stuff which I thought I would share with everyone (no pictures of the conference--I know you are all terribly disappointed, but try to contain your sadness!).

We arrived on Sunday and it was very warm and humid. We wandered around the downtown for a while (by the harbour and on Duckworth and Water which are the main streets through the downtown--Water is the oldest steet in North America). Words like "quaint" and "picturesque" kept popping up. It is very hilly and steep and the roads are all curvy--much like England (big shock considering when it was founded and by whom). We were pretty lazy that evening--another walk and dinner at the hotel which was nice.

Monday was a conference day so we didn't do much beyond that. We had wanted to go on a boat tour out to the ocean to see whales and icebergs but the weather on Tuesday (the only day we could go given the conference schedule) was too cold and the water turned choppy and the fog rolled in--so they cancelled (plus we are about a month too early for icebergs so there wouldn't have been much to see). Jason, a friend from Calgary who was also there for the conference, was disappointed as he had hoped to see the baby delivered on the high-seas by Newfie fishermen but it didn't happen. Instead, he decided to rent a car and we went sight-seeing. We went up to Signal Hill instead (which has the Cabot Citadel on it). It is very high up and a great vantage point from which to see the city. Here is a picture of me and Jeff with a fishing boat coming in in the background. You can see the fog/low-clouds behind our heads. It was very cold.

This is a close up of the fishing boat entering the narrows into the St. John's Harbour with the quaint and picturesque light-house village in the background (you can see how those words kept cropping up to describe things).

After Signal Hill, we decided to drive out to Cape Spear which is the eastern-most point of North America. As you can see from the pictures, it is incredibly cold and windy (at this point we were all glad not to be out on a boat). But, it was a pretty amazing view and we can now say that we have been as far east as the North American continent will allow.

There were also some WWII bunkers there that Jeff and Jason thought were really cool--I thought they looked pretty grim and it must have been a terrible duty to be manning a bunker on Cape Spear in January (though possibly still better than being deployed in France!). The last photo on this posting is the view from the bunker--pretty grim, even in May!

Following is another post with some more pictures to finish off our trip. All-in-all, a good time was had by all and Jeff and I were glad to get one last pre-baby trip in.