We hope the world is coming out of the covid mess for good so we decided it’s high time we had a trip. Time’s marching on and middle-age, for me at least, is a distant memory. So a trip where we travel to St. John’s Newfoundland in July 2022 was in the offing. That trip is now done. Here’s the story in detail, in case our journey appeals to you and some of our tips and experiences might help with your planning.
So, get a cup of coffee, tea or whatever and read on. I’m a tad long winded, I’ve been told. 🙂
It’s been 45 years since we visited St. John’s:
Forty-five years ago we drove to St. John’s from Toronto on a camping. Back then, upon arrival on the Rock, we drove the trans-Canada highway all across Newfoundland from Port au Basque in the west of NL to St. John’s, the capital city, in the south-east. We drove that trip and other parts of the Canadian Maritimes including New Brunswick, and brief overnight stop in PEI, in two weeks!
45 Years Ago there was nothing at Cape Spear!
Back then Cape Spear was a non-entity from the standpoint of the St. John’s tourist info people. When we finally navigated our way down a dirt road for kilometer after kilometer, asked a local on the road if we were on the right road (“Sure bye, you just keep strait on tru!”) we finally arrived at Cape Spear.
There was no sign to let us know that they’d arrived at North America’s most eastern spot, no other visitors were there, there were no places to sit, and no accessible buildings. The one building on the top of the hill was fenced off and in a decrepit state.
We felt it high time to revisit “the rock” and spend some quality time in, and focusing on, the St. John’s area, including Cape Spear (There’s lots of info so here’s a page focused on provding you information all about our Cape Spear experience this trip!)
This trip to St. John’s we flew Porter Airlines to get us from Toronto’s waterfront via Billy Bishop airport on the island there.
We fly Porter Airlines to St. John’s NL
The recent reports about the chaos at Pearson Airport (Toronto’s big international airport) were instrumental in us deciding to use a less complex, stressful trip to St. John’ s NL. We would be taking the train to Toronto from our home to catch a Porter Airlines flight right from downtown Toronto, just a short distance from the Toronto Union Station.
Since this is a page about St. John’s NL and not just how we got there, we wrote about our Porter Airlines experience on another page on this site – to find out why it did not end well follow this link!
Our arrival in St. John’s:
After an enjoyable and uneventful couple of flights to St. John’s from Billy Bishop airport, we arrived around 10:30 p.m. Newfoundland time, which is 90 minutes later than it would be in Ontario, so for us it was still 9:00 p.m.
Atlantic Time vs Newfoundland time:
In case you are interested, NL is in what is called the Newfoundland Time Zone. Wikipedia says “Officially, per Newfoundland and Labrador provincial law, the entire province observes Newfoundland Time. In practice, however, Newfoundland Time is observed only on the island of Newfoundland, its smaller offshore islands, and the southeastern Labrador communities south of Black Tickle. The rest of Labrador, from Cartwright north and west, observes Atlantic Time along with the rest of Atlantic Canada. Southeastern Labrador prefers Newfoundland Time in part to synchronize with the schedule of radio broadcasts from Newfoundland.” If Newfoundland was on Atlantic Time, it would only be 10:00 pm.
Regardless of the local time, and even though we had been travelling for about 5 hours by now, and though it was later in NL than at home, we were still quite good to go. First we needed to get to our accommodations.
We had already checked before arrival and found that there are no services like Uber or Lyft in St. John’s. Not really having any idea about where the airport was in relation to our accommodations, ergo, we couldn’t take local transit, we opted for a taxi to our digs in St. John’s.
Our St. John’s Lodgings:
Our planned accommodations in St. John’s fell through the day before we were to fly there. We were meeting with family for a few days after arrival, and they were going to pick us up at the airport. The night before our departure a phone call informed us that someone in their home had covid, and they were now isolating leading to a quick internet search of available hotels in and around St. John’s and their airport the night before we were heading there! Internet returns showed what the effects of the easing of travel bans had done to prices of, and room availability. Most hotels were packed and the prices were high!
We were going to bite the bullet in terms of hotel costs when my better half suggested we look at what was available in alternative options; specifically, university lodging. It was summertime and she knew that many universities and colleges opened up their dorm rooms to paying guests during the summer months.
Yes indeed. Memorial University in St. John’s had dorm rooms available for us on short notice, their rates were excellent the and we were now good to go with a place to stay when we arrived.
In St. John’s we didn’t quite know what to expect, but we grabbed a cab and spent $25 getting from St. John’s Intl Airport to MUN (their acronym for Memorial Univerity. Our experience there deserves it’s own page, so if you are interested, follow this link to our MUN page on this site.
After a nights stay at our lodgings, we were ready to start exploring St. John’s on our own!
How do visitors to St. John’s get around?
Let’s deal with the “how” first.
If staying in one of the many hotels in downtown St. John’s, much exploring can be done by foot.
We enjoyed a taxi ride from the airport to our hotel, and they are certainly available city-wide to take you anywhere you wish to go.
St. John’s Metrobus service:
Folks staying farther away from the harbor may opt for a taxi, walking or as we did for much of our stay, or consider using the St. John’s Metrobus system. For about $36 two seniors can each have a 10 day pass card, and with a bit of trial and error and help from the pro drivers, use the bus to get to almost anywhere in St. John’s they might want to visit.
St. John’s has a population of just over 110,000 persons. It isn’t a huge city. The Metrobus routes will take a visitor to almost every location in St. John’s one would want to visit except to the top of Signal Hill (you can walk up the hill from the bus stop- but be in great shape!) or out to Cape Spear.
In every case, and we used up all our “tickets” during our stay, we talked to the drivers, and in EVERY case they bent over backwards to help us get to wherever we wanted to go. The buses are clean, drivers are friendly, and the passengers, by and large, were the politest we’d experienced. On all our rides, only two persons didn’t sing out to the driver as they left the bus by the rear doors “Thanks!”. In every case the driver responded with a “you’re welcome”.
Also, we were interested to see how many folks living in St. John’s were from all parts of our world. We expect that the world-wide student body coming to MUN has much to do with that.
So, take the bus! It was a very convenient and inexpensive way to see much of St. John’s!
Hop On Hop Off mini-bus:
Since we didn’t want to walk up Signal Hill to the Cabot Tower, and we wanted to get to Cape Spear, we opted to take a two-day pass on the St. John’s Hop ON Hop Off service as another way to get around St. John’s comfortably.
Where in St. John’s do visitors normally go?
We had learned that downtown St. John’s and along the waterfront was a must-see for folks from away. The map just below, a google map modified by me to add the red numbers you see are the main downtown streets that I expect everyone visiting to St. John’s spend quite a bit of time on. The explanation for the numbers follows the map.
St. John’s Harbor Drive
1 – The red 1 in the map is St. John’s Harbor Drive. On a nice day it is a lovely wander and even has a promenade with signs along its length informing visitors about what visitors are seeing there. From various spots along Harbor Drive here is an excellent view of St. John’s harbour, though in spots working boats and the odd mega-yacht moored there interfere with the view a bit.
The following is just a glimpse of one of the beautiful private yachts moored beside Harbor Drive.
When wandering along the south side of Harbor Drive (the north side is comprised of some commercial buildings, hotels, some condos, offices etc.) not a bad thing necessarily, as further along there is an assortment of restaurants, bars etc.
It doesn’t take long to understand why the city of St. John’s is located where it is with this marvellous natural harbour.
There were several yachts moored and I watched as one of them had two full size oil trucks pumping fuel into the tanks of one of them.
Across the harbor keen eyes may spot the Canadian Coastguard ships heading for port there.
A bit further along, all the “action” is still on the south side at this point, the harbor opens up a bit more and a gaggle of local yachtspersons have moored their vessels in the harbor too. A little later in the week we discovered a cruise ship had just docked there.
Let’s have one more look a the harbor before we head uptown.
From Harbor Drive it’s pretty much all uphill!
As you walk north up any the sidewalk from Harbor Drive, it’s uphill, as is the walk for a few blocks as you wander downtown St. John’s. Please keep that in mind if you have issues walking. We huffed and puffed a couple of times as we headed up from St. John’s downtown harbor shore.
There’s tons of stuff to see and do in St. John’s and I hate to not tell you about it yet this page is getting a bit long. When you’re ready to continue click this link to the next page. It will open in a new window so you can easily get back to this page if you wish.
Thanks for reading. Cheers.