St. John's, Newfoundland

‘Twas a soggy day in St. John’s this morning when I got out of bed at 6:20 to set up the morning coffee for the group. The timer worked as advertised and the coffee pot was chugging away as I got to the kitchen. Valentino was raising hell in his bowl, demanding to be fed immediately. I gave him a few granules of healthy food and then threw in his favorite food…freeze dried worms. He gobbled them up in a flash, throwing water as he attacked each worm. I then went to the car to get the rest of the coffee setup and set everything out under the awning. We finished off most of the pot as we waited for our tour bus to arrive.

Right on schedule, our bus pulled up. Our driver, Vic, introduced himself and then introduced us all to Lucille, our tour guide. She was a perky bundle of energy and we immediately knew we were in for a good tour. Little did we know! We first headed for Quidi Vidi Village and were treated to our first Newfie slang, of which there is plenty. Quidi Vidi is known locally as “Quite a Vita”. I wish I could remember it all. I’m going to start carrying a notebook on these tours. Quidi Vidi is a really cute little fishing village with a narrow harbor opening.


Quidi Vidi Harbor



Cute chairs, eh?

It has another twist…a micro brewery. I bought a six-pack with three bottles of Honey Brown, a blend of Chocolate malt, Crystal malt and honey, and three bottles of Eric’s Red, a cream ale that won the Silver medal at the 2001 World Beer Championships.

Moving right along, we next stopped at the Government House, the official residence of the Lt. Governor. He lives in some pretty nice digs!


Government House

Inside Government House

The bus then headed for downtown and we all started loosening up when Lucille told us of an area of the island we would not be seeing during the tour. I’m sure some of this has something to do with the infamous Newfie humor, but she told us all about a small town called Dildo. Now, Dildo has a park called Dildo Run Park which is next to Virgin Run which is right near Herring Neck and Heart’s Desire and just down the road from Hibb’s Hole. Someone on the bus commented that this sounded like a great place for a “nooner”. Not knowing the term “nooner”, we explained it to Lucille. Her reply was, “OH, a quickie!” I then told her of a “morner” which is a “nooner”, only sooner. That sent the bus howling! It went downhill from there…very fast! Lucille was soon red-faced and staying right up with all the banter. She then passed out samples of the locally-produced candy, “Climax”, made by the Purity company.

We soon got to the downtown area. The first thing I noticed was that almost all the homes were all painted up in different pastel colors. We went through an area of brightly colored homes the locals call “Jelly Bean Lane”.

Jelly Bean Lane

We then stopped at the Catholic Basilica and Presentation Convent where the marble carving of the Veiled Virgin by Giovanni Strazza is found. All of the group was mesmerized by the carving. The photos don’t do it justice.

The Veiled Virgin

We then went into a drawing room and listened to a metal-disk music box.

The musical selection was some long hundred-dollar-a-plate name but was actually a five-dollar rendition of “Dixie”. The sound form the device was awesome. We loved it!

We then moved to the main harbor and checked out a pair of larger than life bronze statues of a Newfoundland Dog and a Labrador Retriever that overlooked the water

and a monument to military veterans.

After that, it was lunch time. We went to My Brother’s Place for a great buffet. They served a great salad, a fish dish with cream sauce, some OUTSTANDING meat balls (I went back for a BIG bowl of seconds and got scolded by Claudia for being uncouth and a bad example of a Tailgunner) and lasagna. I had only three small cheesecake bites and actually passed on the fried ice cream, my all-time favorite dessert. I actually surprised myself!

We then headed for Cape Spear, the most easterly point in North America

and the site of the first long range communication by wireless radio. On December 12, 1901, Guglielmo Marconi received a wireless radio signal from colleagues in England. There was a book for visiting hams to sign, so I added my own ham radio call sign, WA6ARQ, to the log book of VO1AA, the Cape Spears Ham Radio station.

Cape Spear radio tower

We then went back to the downtown area for some shopping since the area scheduled for the rest of the tour was too foggy to see anything. We returned to the RV park about 5:30. It was a great day, even considering the bad weather.

Today, the last day of July, was a good start. After a night of fairly heavy rain, we awoke to a 50% sky…well, maybe only about 35-40% sun, but that’s better than no sun! We split the group to go to the National Research Council – Institute for Ocean Technology. This is a government organization that does research on anything to do with the ocean. Anyone building a boat, oil platform, undersea whatever, life boats, survival gear or anything else dealing with the ocean can come to this group with their idea or design and have it evaluated. They build and test prototype ships in miniature scale models, usually about 1:20 scale, to see how they perform and how they can be improved upon. We toured the model building room, the machine shop, the towing tank and the ice tank where they can freeze the water solution so it has an ice cap up to 6” thick. This would simulate a sheet of ice 10’ thick (at a 20:1 scale). They use this tank to test ice breakers, subs breaking through the polar ice cap and even the Confederation Bridge that we travelled over the other day. The bridge was tested here and they developed the system that automatically breaks up the ice as it freezes around the pilings. They even have a propeller evaluation tank that was confiscated from Nazi Germany after WWII. They can put a prop in the tank, start it spinning at the desired RPM’s and then photograph it with a laser strobe and see any cavitation the prop gives off. (cavitation is a BAD thing) This was one interesting tour!

The rest of the day was spent shopping, cleaning out the bays of the motorhome to accommodate all the stuff we have been buying and preparing for tonight’s “Margarita & Munchies” party. Tomorrow is a travel day to Gander.