Travel Blogging XV

St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada: Today the DrsC completed their set of Canadian provinces, we’ve now visited all of the provinces, if not necessarily seen all of each province. We’ve also visited one of the three territories: the Yukon. We make the brag that we’ve visited more of Canada than most Canadians, I expect it's true, too.

Newfoundland is a very large island, nearly the size of California. It was not a part of the original compact that formed Canada; it was the first Crown Colony and joined Canada later. The capital, St. John’s, has one of the world’s true natural harbors, if not one of the largest. It is easy to imagine how excited early explorers were when they found the harbor.

We enjoyed watching the careful Y-turn our monster ship made to leave St. John’s harbor. They cantilevered the stern away from the pier, backed up maybe half a mile, pivoted to bring the bow in line with the quite narrow exit, and headed out of the channel just over dead slow. I’m not sure we could have done it if there had been strong winds.

This afternoon we took what could charitably be called “the booze tour” of St. John’s. We began with the place where Newman’s aged port wine. Port wine would be shipped from Oporto, Portugal, to St. John’s, Newfoundland, where it was aged for at least one winter, after which it was bottled and shipped to England for sale and consumption. This process improved the port. We sampled Newman’s port and it was nice.

From Newman’s we drove to a tiny fishing village named Quidi Vidi, on a tiny harbor, to visit a brewery also named Quidi Vidi (both village and brewery are pronounced “kiddy viddy”). The brewery does the best tasting tour ever, lots of different beers and ales to taste, and then they gave us each a bottle of our favorite. This and salty snacks too. Quidi Vidi, the village, is very picturesque as well.

Next we went to the top of Signal Hill for an overall panoramic view of the St. John’s harbor and surrounding region – a great view. On the way back to the ship we were treated to a shot of rum, called Newfoundland rum but produced in Jamaica.

In less than four hours we sampled wine, several beers, and 100 proof rum; then stopped at a liquor store on the way to the ship in case anyone was inspired to take the local product with them – most were. We returned to the ship a happy crew.

St. John’s may sit half way to Europe but it begins to look North American, whatever that is. There are tall buildings, and it feels more like the western hemisphere somehow. It claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in North America, perhaps it is even true.

Newfoundland has had its own cycles of boom and bust: bust when the cod fishing was shut down to prevent destruction of the Grand Banks fishing grounds, followed by boom after oil was discovered. The oil has brought in lots of money, and the problems that follow oil production – crime and drugs.