Week 659 · September 2026 · Newfoundland, Canada
By the time we got to St. John’s, the sun was starting to peak out and we were surprised with the size of the city as we entered town. After the remoteness of Nova Scotia, we were expecting St. John’s to be another quiet village — quite the opposite — it was a “big little city” with lots of high-end restaurants and a late night music scene.
We were now at a slower pace — we had almost 4 days/3 nights in St. John’s when normally we would have planned this as a 2-day/1-night stop — so we settled in at a relaxed pace. St. John’s is a bit of a foodie town; our first night we were walking around and found a place to eat — fish and chips weren't even on the menu (one of the two staples of this trip, the other being a lobster salad roll). I still got cod — but prepared with butter and other seasoning, and very good.
For our first full day, we took the hop-on/hop-off bus in the morning and a walking tour in the afternoon which gave us the basics and the lay of the land. St. John’s closed its main restaurant street (Water Street) during COVID to car traffic and keeps it closed most of the time so it is fully pedestrianized. The more famous street — with more bars per foot than anywhere else in North America — runs parallel: George Street. While Water Street was rebuilt following fires that burned most of the city and has historic brick buildings, George Street was more of a hodgepodge of different places focused on guys coming into port back in the day. We found that we fit in better on Water Street, which was lower key and didn't have cover charges (and the music wasn't as loud). We had just missed the big end-of-summer festival and although it didn't look crowded to us, people said this was busier than most times of the year.
One of the signature landmarks of St. John’s for tourists is “Jellybean Row” — a row of different-colored row houses. The reality is that there is not a single “Jellybean Row” but all throughout the old town, houses were brightly painted and are now mandated by code. The legend was so that fishermen returning could see their houses — but most houses were obstructed by the various hills, and the local guide said it was probably leftover paint from their brightly colored boats. One activity continuously pointed out to us was to become an honorary Newfoundlander by getting “Screeched In” — which entailed taking an oath in an English/Gaelic dialect, getting your feet wet, drinking a shot of Jamaican rum, and kissing a cod. Most every bar had ceremonies but we didn't get the timing right while in town and had another foodie-type dinner instead.
St. John’s is the capital and largest city of Newfoundland and Labrador, and is the easternmost city in North America (excluding Greenland). European fishermen from England, Normandy, Brittany, the Basque region, and Portugal were using the harbour as a seasonal base as early as the 1500s — when Sir Humphrey Gilbert arrived in 1583 to claim it as England’s first overseas colony, he found 36 ships of various nations already anchored there. Water Street, which runs along the harbour front, is considered the oldest commercial street in North America, its origins as a path connecting fishing wharves dating to that same era.
The city was devastated by major fires in 1816, 1846, and 1892, which is why much of the downtown is built in brick rather than the wood typical of the period. The colourful row houses now known collectively as “Jellybean Row” are mandated by city code; the popular legend that fishermen painted them brightly so they could spot their own house from the harbour is disputed by local historians, who note that most houses were obscured by the hills. St. John’s is also home to North America’s oldest annual sporting event: the Royal St. John’s Regatta, held on the first Wednesday of August each year — one of the few weather-dependent civic holidays in the world.
The AirBNB recommended parking was in a good spot, but our rooftop box didn't fit in parking garages. This was the second parking garage we didn't fit and we almost hit the roof on a third. This was the first clear signal that any type of larger vehicle created parking issues and limited options — not only to park, but to pull off the road for a quick hike or picture.
We had a day focused on a whale-watching tour and found out the prior night — more accurately, googled the specific location for the first time — that the port was 45 minutes away. Luckily this was near a hike I had seen on YouTube as well as driving back by Cape Spear, which we had visited on the hop-on/hop-off bus tour. Cape Spear is the easternmost point on the North American continent and has two lighthouses as well as old WWII defensive gun fortifications.
Cape Spear — its name a corruption of the French espérance, meaning “hope,” likely reflecting the relief of sailors sighting land after weeks at sea — is the easternmost point in North America, standing at 47.5°N, 52.6°W on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula. When you stand here, you are closer to Ireland than to Vancouver. It is the first place on the continent to see the sunrise each morning.
The original lighthouse, built in 1836, is Newfoundland’s oldest surviving lighthouse and has been restored to its mid-19th century appearance complete with period furnishings. A second, functional concrete tower built in 1955 continues to guide ships into St. John’s Harbour, 11 kilometres to the north. During the Second World War, a coastal defence battery was built into the cliffs at Cape Spear to protect St. John’s and the harbour entrance from German U-boats, and the bunkers remain accessible to visitors today. Cape Spear forms the southern flank of the harbour’s defences; Signal Hill, visible to the north, covers the northern entrance through the Narrows.
We arrived in Bay Bulls a couple of hours before our tour — so the first order was to test the new drone before we started our hike. It cost $40, so while I was expecting fewer features, I didn't realize how much. My first drone had an “auto-hover” configuration where it just stayed in one spot once it took off unless you wanted to move it. The second drone took off, immediately drifted with the wind, and when I tried to manually correct, I flew it into the forest — it took a while to retrieve it and I decided to retire from drone piloting for the balance of the trip. We then did a couple-mile hike on the East Coast Trail which had a lot of great overlooks.
Another glorious day for a boat trip, but the crew immediately lowered expectations, promising a lot of puffins but likely no migrating whales — especially since they had seen some in the morning and it was unlikely to get lucky twice in one day. This ended up being correct. I was able to get “Screeched In” on the boat ride but kissed a toy puffin and not a real cod.
St. John’s has a pretty unique port and it is easy to see why this was a defensive stronghold, with Cape Spear covering the southern flank while Signal Hill protects the northern entrance through the Narrows. After a quick tour around Signal Hill, we went down to the smaller harbour of Quidi Vidi — which also was the namesake for the most popular brewery in Newfoundland.
Signal Hill rises 167 metres (548 feet) above the Narrows — the only entrance to St. John’s Harbour — and has been a strategic military and communications site since fortifications were first built here in the mid-17th century. France and Britain fought repeatedly for control of Signal Hill during their centuries-long contest for North America; the final battle of the Seven Years’ War in North America was fought here in 1762, when the French surrendered the city to the British.
The site’s most celebrated moment came on 12 December 1901, when Guglielmo Marconi suspended a kite-borne antenna 500 feet above the hill and received the first transatlantic wireless signal — the letter “S” in Morse code, transmitted from Poldhu, Cornwall, 3,500 kilometres away. Cabot Tower, built between 1898 and 1900 to commemorate both Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and the 400th anniversary of John Cabot’s voyage to North America, sits at the top of the hill and served as a flag-signalling station until 1958. Marconi returned in 1920 to test a long-range voice transmitter; the signal reached a ship sailing from England, 1,200 miles away. Signal Hill is now a National Historic Site of Canada.
St. John’s was a great stop on our trip — and having 3 nights in one place was good as well to reset. We didn’t have a clear plan for the next three days until our next scheduled night in Gros Morne National Park — about 500 miles away — and narrowed it down to a few options and generally tried to schedule driving while it was raining.