St. Johns, Newfoundland

On Friday, we drove into St. Johns, Newfoundland, which is a very big city…and a big change from the rest of the island.

St. Johns sits on a hill and so do its colorful houses.

It has a BIG harbor with BIG ships.

The way the houses sit on the steep hills reminds us of San Francisco.

We drove up to Cabot Tower at the top of Signal Hill.

There was a great view of St. Johns from up there.

But it was windy and cold.

You could also see way out to the Atlantic,

the hiking trails on the hill below,

and the lighthouse at St. Johns.

From here, Guglielmo Marconi received the first wireless transatlantic signal in 1901.

The Titanic sunk just 365 miles from here.

And from here, we are closer to London and Paris then we are to home (2,600 miles to Nashville).  I think we have gone as far east and north as we are going to go this trip.

You can see more of the city in the background.

And the bay (Chuck insisted on getting me in some of the pictures.)

Next, we drove around town some looking for a place to eat.  We drove through the campus of the Memorial University of Newfoundland.

The traffic seemed to get worse and worse and we were getting hungrier and hungrier so we stopped at a Mary Brown’s Chicken and Taters, a franchise we had seen frequently in Canada.  It was ok but expensive. 

We finished the day with a trip to Walmart and Sobeys (a grocery store) and were very glad to get back out of the city.  (We much prefer the countryside.)

Why don’t you finish up looking back on our day with a view from the top of Signal Hill: