St John’s: City Sights and Sunrises

(2022 Newfoundland Ep 11)

(Last week’s special blog post was about our challenges dodging Fiona.  This week, we are praying for family, friends and the many persons in Florida and the Carolinas affected by Hurricane Ian) 

We return now to blog time and our arrival at St John’s, NF.

We arrived at St John’s (right side of map above) more than three weeks and 2000 miles after coming to Port aux Basques.  Despite having only 115,000 residents, St John’s feels like a BIG CITY.  There are lots of stores, a few high-rise buildings, and busy highways.  Downtown St John’s was especially crowded because of two large cruise ships that were docked for the weekend.

St John’s is very hilly.  Colorful townhouse-style residences line many of the narrow downtown streets – these streets are often described as ‘jellybean rows.’

A couple miles to the east, Signal Hill overlooks the city, and 50 foot Cabot Tower sits atop the hill.  The tower was built around the turn of the 20^th century to commemorate the 400^th anniversary of the discovery of NF by Italian explorer John Cabot. 

Signal Hill has an interesting history.  Flags were flown on the hill as ships approached the harbor from the early 1700s through the mid-20^th century.  In 1901, Guglielmo Marconi received the first wireless message from England on the hill (the Morse Code letter ‘S’), and in 1920, one of the first transatlantic transmissions of the human voice was made there.

After touring Cabot Tower, we descended a steep series of stairs and then hiked along an amazing cliffside trail overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.   The trail continued along the narrow inlet to the St John’s harbor with views of the downtown and cruise ships.  A short section of the trail followed a very narrow cliffside ledge.  We were glad for chains to hold on to!  This trail would definitely be on our top 10 list of most scenic hikes!

We got up at 4 am the next morning for a 30-minute drive to Cape Spear to see where the sun rises first in North America.  We weren’t disappointed – it was a pleasant morning with a few colorful clouds on the horizon. 

After welcoming the new day, we returned to town and stopped at Tim Horton’s for breakfast.  ‘Timmy H’, as we call it, is a Canadian institution that serves great coffee and donuts. They are located throughout NF and Canada.

Our time in St John’s ended with a little downtown shopping and a visit to Quidi Vidi, a quirky and picturesque fishing village nearby.   At the Quidi Vidi Brewery Company, visitors get ‘screeched’ to become honorary NF citizens.  When we heard this involved drinking rum and kissing a codfish, we respectfully declined the ceremony!

One rabbit at the campground
(not many critters in the city unless you count 6000 cruise ship passengers)

Next week:  we spend a few days on the Avalon Peninsula south of St Johns and begin traveling back to Port aux Basques.  Enroute, we follow one amazing RabbiTRAIL and decline another.