Leaving childish dreams of whales behind me I travelled to St Johns and the far more adult dream of puffins. Absolutely nothing would stop me seeing puffins! On arrival in St Johns I was greeted with an email from the tour company; my puffin cruise had been cancelled due to expected inclement weather.. I briefly considered cutting my losses and heading straight to Cleveland but some frantic rescheduling later I was able to get a spot in a couple of days time. The only problem is that it happens to be day I fly in from St Pierre. Hopefully my plane isn’t late.
With the puffin crisis at least temporarily averted I could take a look at St Johns. Hills, brightly coloured wooden buildings and a harbour. There, now you know as much about it as I do. I was staying in Georgestown which was hilly with brightly coloured wooden buildings. The harbour was a twenty minutes walk away. I got to my accommodation and dumped my bags. Timber the house cat promptly went to sleep on them. I decided to unpack later.
St Johns is all about the harbour of course. When people arrive by sea they’re less concerned with a hilly hinterland and more worried about decent parking for their ships. A decent harbour ringed by hills grants advantages that far outweigh the incidental tourist having a heart attack on the way back up the hill. It claims to be North America’s oldest city and Newfoundland Britain’s oldest colony. As such it has the usual handsome buildings associated with the brutal tearing of the land from it’s previous inhabitants (we have a decent number of those ourselves) including an impressive Roman Catholic cathedral which seems pretty big now but must have been huge for the population at the time.
The inclement weather the puffin tour operators turned up pretty much on schedule which made wandering around St Johns somewhat less than fun so I wandered around Georgestown instead. There I found a bakery, a cafe, a museum and the aforementioned Catholic Cathedral of St John the Baptist. Just down the road was the Baptist Cathedral of St John the Catholic.
In search of a sightseeing opportunity that got me out of the weather I walked down to The Rooms which is the museum I mentioned earlier. They had a great exhibit on Newfoundland’s contribution to the First World War (they were on our side, unless you’re German in which case they weren’t) culminating in the Battle of Beaumont-Hamel. This battle is a defining moment in Newfoundland history which is to say it was a ghastly slaughter where nearly everybody died. It has the same resonance for Newfoundlanders as Gallipoli does for Australians. Incidentally the Newfoundland regiment was at Gallipoli as well.
Other displays highlighted the natural environment of Newfoundland and Labrador, there seemed to be a fair bit on peatbogs. There was also an exhibit on all of the various races of people who have stumbled across the region over the last couple of thousand years and for one reason or other decided to stay. Presumably everywhere warmer was already occupied.
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