I’ve been in Newfoundland since July 22. That’s 20 days. For the most part, it’s been 2 lane roads with no traffic, no traffic lights, no crowds, no lines. Today we came to St. Johns, Newfoundland’s largest city. The 4 lane highways are back as well as traffic lights, traffic circles, and crowds. It makes me appreciate the rest of Newfoundland.
We are back on the bus and our first stop is Signal Hill to visit the Cabot Tower.
Signal Hill was also important in guarding the harbor going into St. Johns, so there were cannons and bunkers on the site.
Then we wound around the old part of St Johns down by the river called JellyBean Row. The houses are all together like brownstones, but they paint these in what are called “Jelly Bean” colors.
Our next stop was Cape Spear Lighthouse. We all had to have a tourist shot here because this is the easternmost point in North America.
There are 2 lighthouses at Cape Spear.
We went to lunch at Chafe’s Landing in Petty Harbour-Maddox Cove.
Our food choices were Fish & Chips, Poutine or Moose Mess. Poutine is a Canadian thing consisting of French fries covered in cheese curds and brown gravy. Moose Mess is similar but it has moose hamburger instead of cheese curds.
In the afternoon, we went to Gatheralls in Bulls Bay, NL, Canada for a Puffin and Whale Watching Tour. The boat took us near the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, the largest breeding colony of Atlantic Puffins in North America. They told us there were 265, 000 puffins in this Reserve, whereas there were only about 200 at the Bonavista lighthouse the other day. The puffins come to these breeding sites for about 4 months starting early May. They spend the rest of the year out on the open ocean.
Since my iPhone doesn’t zoom in far enough, I’m going to have to rely on Mike’s puffin photos.
