Seeing Some Sights in St. John’s

For the first time in seven weeks, my morning started with the sound of an alarm clock. Actually, I slept through the first alarm. It was the second alarm that woke me. I guess that’s what happens when you sleep in a real bed, in a real house – with walls that don’t let in every ray of light. That said, my first official post-trip day off started at 6:30. What was I thinking?

Well, it turns out I was thinking that today I would go to Signal Hill for some sightseeing and a hike around the area. I’d also be meeting up with my friend Janis from back in Oshawa who happens to be vacationing in St. John’s at the moment.

Despite being offered a ride to Signal Hill, I clearly had to bike there. I mean, I’ve biked this far – I couldn’t very well stop now. Not to mention it was only about 3 km away – although, I was glad to be climbing it without all the gear on my bike! I think my bike was glad too. It only took about 15 minutes to get to the top of the hill but by the halfway point I had worked up a sweat.

It was another cloudy morning when I first headed out but there were a few beams of sunlight peering through the clouds onto the water. I was hopeful that the sun would eventually be able to win out over the clouds.

I met up with Janis as planned at 8:00 and we proceeded to go for a hike around Signal Hill. Even with the cloud cover, the views of St. John’s and the harbour were beautiful. And, as the morning went along, the sun did start to shine through. It was turning into a really nice day. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll let the image gallery do most of the talking in this update.

By 11:00 we had returned to the parking lot and by 11:30 we parted company with the plan of meeting up again later. I headed downtown to do a little exploration on my own. There wasn’t much activity going on but I found the Terry Fox Monument – incredible how he ran the equivalent of a marathon a day for over 140 days.

For lunch I decided not to have some sort of traditional Newfoundland dish like Cod Tongues or even any sort of fish whatsoever, but I realize I should at some point – and I will. Instead, I returned to the Poutinerie and had a pulled pork poutine – and yes, this time I went with the “Wow” size.

I returned home (ie. Jan and Chris’ place) around 2:30 with the plan of addressing the “What next?” question. I tried to focus on the map but the combination of the late night, the early morning, the hiking, and the poutine meant that a little power nap was in order. Well, the little power nap turned into a three hour nap. When I awoke the only answer to the “What next?” question came from Chris who knocked on my door to let me know that a dinner of ribs, potatoes, and vegetables was ready. And that sounded like a pretty good answer. Actually, it was a VERY good answer. Very good indeed!

“What next?” can wait until tomorrow.