30th August – Toronto, ON – St Johns, Newfoundland (NF)

Another day, another province, another timezone and another flight. Up early this morning to head back to Toronto airport to catch our 2.5 hour flight to St Johns in Newfoundland. Pushjah (or some Indian name) picked us up in the limo which is really a flash black car and we arrived safely at the airport after being stingy with our tip. Dan said we beat them at the cricket so it was all good. We flew Westjet and with time difference arrived at the airport and organized our accommodation at the Abba (gotta love the name) Inn B&B and picked up our little red car (none of course which had been organized prior to our arrival). Back in the saddle driving on the wrong side of the road, Dan scarily handed me a map to assist him in finding where he needed to go (you would think after nearly 12 years he would have realized I can’t read a map and have no sense of direction) but we found it – yah!!

Dropped off our bags and went for a walk down to the port where we found a statue of a Newfoundland and Labrador. Both reflecting the name of the two parts to the province (and big dogs too). We dipped our hands into the water to feel the freezing Atlantic Waters and then headed off for lunch to try some traditional food. Dan tried the local, cod fillets, scruncheons (deep fried pork crackling) and a local beer. We noticed in Newfoundland the strange accent from the Irish influence so it sounds like the people have a combined accent – very strange.

We then drove out to Cape Spear, the most eastern part of Northern American Continent (and we’re only a five hour flight from London!!). The weather was beautiful, the seas were smooth and views were impressive. There was some equipment left from the WWII – Dan decided to do his best Cher impersonation on one of the cannons.Up the top of the hill at Cape Spear was an old lighthouse (now a museum) and a new working lighthouse. The old lighthouse if you look closely looks like it has a lot of windows to comply with British architecture standards at the time, however, it was just to cold and impractical to have that many windows so if you look at the photo closely, some of the windows are actually painted on.
We then drove to Petty Cove which is a small fishing village. The views here were beautiful and apparently quite a few movies are made here because it is so beautiful (other than my Bollywood film of course).
We headed off to a local Irish pub (very heavy Irish influence with all of the pubs etc here) and met a lovely Central Newfy girl, who was hard to understand (although she told us it was her posh voice so people could understand her). She looked after us with a massive serving of some of the best scallops we have ever had and also treated us to moose soup and cod tongues (!!). I was first to try the moose, and it wasn’t bad. A bit like beef. I’m not that keen on trying the seal flipper stew – a local delicacy though!