I have now been to 10/10 Canadian provinces, but more importantly, I give the province of Newfoundland a 10/10! Everything about it, the scenery, the people, the wildlife, the little fishing bays and towns were amazing!
I went there during March Break with my friends and fellow English language assistants Vicki, Erin, and Trevor. We spent the night before taking the ferry, in Antigonish with Natalie.
On Saturday we had dinner in North Sydney before the ferry. We had dinner at Lobster Pound & Moore - a really neat restaurant with interesting lobster dishes. Vicki and Erin got lobster wontons, while I had lobster ravioli! It was all good, but very creamy and rich. It had been Trevor's birthday a few days earlier so we surprised him with a piece of cake and singing waitresses. His response "I hate you.". Glad he enjoyed it! The ferry ride to Newfoundland was pretty uneventful. We took a night ferry so it was too dark to see anything and everyone slept most of the way. The ferry had so many huge tvs in it and every time I woke up something bizarre was playing and I wasn't sure what was going on.
Excitement unfolded in the morning when we saw Newfoundland as the sun was coming up. We had pretty bad weather for driving on the Sunday. However, from the moment we drove off the ferry the landscape was a perfect portrayal of my mind's image of Newfoundland! There were huge jutting rocks, small coloured houses, and table top mountains.
We drove to Gros Morne National Park where we spent some time tromping through the thigh deep snow in the rain and wind. We stopped at a gas station/general store while we were to ask adivce about things to see in the park, and the guy had a great accent and talked so fast that we didn't have much idea what he was saying. While in the park we visited a beach with a shipwreck, a river with the sides lined with huge sheets and chunks of broken ice, and various viewpoints. The most exciting thing was probably when we saw a herd of caribou! This was also the only time I saw any moose. I saw two chopped off moose heads and their beautiful pelts just tossed to the side of a parking lot. I pet them and honestly after that I'm surprised I was allowed back in the car!
We spent the night in a hostel in Bonne Bay which was a converted hospital. The man who runs the hostel gave us a tour of the place. They still have things there like an old x-ray machine. The dorm rooms was an old ER with beds surrounded by curtains. It was pretty neat and creepy. We got double rooms however, so we were in offices converted to bedrooms. It was a windy night, and we were the only ones there and the old building was pretty creaky. It was a fun place to stay.
In the morning Erin and I woke up extra early to go hike out to a lighthouse viewpoint. It was beautiful and totally worth getting up for. Monday we drove to St. John's. It was a long trip and the weather was once again anything but ideal for driving. We stayed in a colourful jellybean house hostel in St. John's. Besides the university students living at the hostel we had the place to ourselves once again. After we settled in to the hostel we went to get something to eat. It was late and the only place we could find open was a Smitty's in a hotel. I wasn't convinced it would be anything special, but to my pleasure, there was a "Newfoundland section" on the menu. We ended up trying cod's tongues, scruncheons, and toutons. Cod's tongues are exactly that - cod's tongues, and to me they had a very similar taste and texture to traditional cuts of cod flesh. When we ordered scruncheons that waitress laughed and explained to us that it was fried chunks of pork fat and that we probably would not enjoy a bowl of them very much! She suggested having it fried up with the cod's tongues so we took her advice on that one. How disgusting, but deliciously addicting to eat tiny cubs of fried fat! I could never do that at home. And toutons - toutons are my new favourite thing! It is basically fried bread dough that you eat with molasses. I was never crazy about molasses but here in l'Acadie I have developed a taste for it.
We went to sleep pretty exhausted and excited to wake up to see the city of St. John's in the daylight.
Posts of Newfoundland are to be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment