We’ve Gone to the Dogs

We spent Wednesday in the eastern-most Canadian province. Here are photo clues as to its name:

  

That’s right . . . Newfoundland Labrador! Neither of us realized that Newfoundland and Labrador were one province until yesterday. There are about a half million people living in an area about the size of Texas, and they appear to be a hardy bunch, given the remoteness of the location and the ruggedness of the terrain.

We lucked out again with beautiful, sunny weather for our day ashore. Our ship docked right in the town of St. John’s, founded in 1497 by John Cabot who named it after John the Baptist. We walked into town and took photos to show just how large the ship looked; it was over 4 city blocks long.

  

The buildings were painted every color of the rainbow, with legend being the townspeople used whatever color they had left over after painting their boats.

  

I loved the way several homes had mailboxes that reflected the colorful buildings that they were attached to.

  

In the afternoon we took a tour that included Quidi Vidi (pronounced kiddie viddie), a tiny fishing village on the outskirts of St. John’s. There, we stopped at a microbrewery that now occupies the site of a former boat house.

  

We then drove up to Cabot Tower on top of Signal Hill, where the first transatlantic wireless transmission was received in 1901. This was especially interesting for us to see because last week, in Falmouth, we had seen the origination site of that Morse code message. We climbed to the top and took in the breathtaking views of St. John’s harbor.

 

In that last photo, you can get an idea of just how narrow the passage is from the harbor into the open ocean. As we left St. John’s, most of the passengers went to the outside decks to observe our S-L-O-W departure. What do you think Bill and I said as we pulled out of Newfoundland Labrador???

“We have to come back here!”