Three days in St John's: closer to Dublin than to Vancouver, and it sounds like it
Two nights on the Avalon Peninsula: the provincial museum and the basilica on the first afternoon, a boat and Signal Hill on the second day, and the fishing village inside the city on the last morning.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- St. John's
- Places
- 7 across 3 days
St John's is not really near anything. It sits on the far eastern edge of Newfoundland, nearer to Ireland than to the Canadian west coast and nearer to the Azores than to Ottawa, and it keeps its own time zone offset by thirty minutes from everybody else's, which is exactly the kind of thing this place does. Fishing crews were working out of this harbour before there was a permanent European settlement anywhere on the continent north of the Caribbean.
The town is built up the side of a bowl, with a narrow gap in the cliffs at the bottom of it that ships still come through, and the houses on the slope are painted in colours that make no architectural sense and complete emotional sense in February. The accent is Irish and West Country English, four centuries old and barely diluted. The pub culture is genuine, the music is live and unamplified, and the storytelling is a competitive sport.
Two nights covers the city. What you really want is a car and a week for the peninsula around it, but even a short stop gets you icebergs in spring, whales in summer, and one of the best walks in Canada straight out of the middle of town.
Highlights
- A harbour entrance a couple of hundred metres wide with a hill and a fort on either side
- The tower where three faint clicks arrived from Cornwall in 1901 and started transatlantic radio
- A cliff path running from the last houses in town round the headland to the open ocean
- Icebergs from Greenland drifting past the harbour mouth in May and June
- A street of nothing but bars, which the city claims is the densest run of them in North America
Where to stay
St John's, two nights
The town wraps around a harbour that opens to the sea through a gap in the cliffs called the Narrows, with Signal Hill on the north side and Fort Amherst on the south. Water Street and Duckworth Street run along the bottom, everything else climbs.
Stay downtown, in one of the wooden row houses turned guest house on Gower or Queen's Road. You will be five minutes from the harbour, the restaurants and the noise, and the noise is part of it.
Day by day
Day 1 in St. John's
The Rooms, the basilica and George Street
Start at the top of the town. The Rooms opened in 2005 on the site of an old fort, is named after the wooden sheds where fishing families processed their catch, and holds the provincial museum, art gallery and archives in one building with an enormous window looking down over the harbour. The Newfoundland and Labrador history galleries are the best short course you will get in why this island is the way it is: four hundred years of cod, the Beothuk, the resettlement programmes, the loss of the regiment at Beaumont-Hamel in 1916, and the vote in 1949 that made Newfoundland the last province to join Canada.
Walk down the hill to the basilica, built between 1841 and 1855 out of local stone and Irish granite, and enormous for the town it was built in. It was deliberately placed on the ridge so that it would be the first thing a ship saw coming through the Narrows.
Then keep going downhill to George Street, which is two short blocks containing nothing but bars and which the city claims has more of them per square foot than anywhere else in North America. Whether or not that survives scrutiny, there is live music in several of them from early evening, most of it traditional and none of it a performance for visitors.
Eat well first. St John's punches enormously above its weight for a town of two hundred thousand people.
- 14:00
The Rooms
CultureTwo hours, and start on the top floor with the provincial history before the art. The cafe has the best view in the city.
- 16:30
Basilica Cathedral of St. John the Baptist
ReligiousTen minutes downhill from the Rooms. Free, usually open in the afternoon, and much larger inside than the street suggests.
- 18:00
Magnum & Stein's
EatSeasonal Newfoundland cooking on Water Street, with cod, moose and root vegetables treated seriously. Book on a weekend.
- 20:15
George Street
VisitTwo blocks, wall to wall. Start early rather than late, and follow the sound of a fiddle rather than a sign.
With more time: The Newman Wine Vaults on Water Street are eighteenth century brick tunnels where port from Portugal was aged after a ship sheltered here one winter and the wine turned out better for the crossing. They open seasonally and take twenty minutes.
Day 2 in St. John's
Out through the Narrows, then up Signal Hill
Get on the water in the morning while the wind is usually lowest. Boats leave from the harbour and go out through the Narrows into the open Atlantic, which takes about two hours: humpbacks and minke in summer, icebergs in late spring, puffins and gannets most of the season, and a view back at the town stacked up its hillside that you cannot get any other way. There is usually a screech-in and a song on the way back, which is exactly as touristic and as enjoyable as it sounds.
In the afternoon go up Signal Hill. It is the headland on the north side of the Narrows, it was the site of the last engagement of the Seven Years' War in North America in 1762, and the stone tower on the summit was finished in 1897. In December 1901 Marconi sat in a room below it with a kite holding up an aerial and heard three faint clicks sent from Cornwall, which was the first radio signal to cross the Atlantic.
Then take the North Head Trail down. It runs from the tower along the cliff face on a narrow path with chains and steps in places, drops about two hundred metres, and comes out in the Battery, a village of houses wedged onto the rocks at the harbour mouth that is still part of the city. It is an hour and a half and it is the best walk in eastern Canada. Do not attempt it in the wet or in the wrong shoes.
Dinner and a pint in the town below afterwards.
- 09:30
Iceberg Quest Ocean Tours
VisitTwo hours out of the harbour, several sailings a day from May to September. Book the morning one and dress two layers warmer than the town.
- 13:30
Signal Hill
NatureDrive, taxi or a hard forty minute walk up from downtown. Go into Cabot Tower and out onto the point behind it.
- 15:15
The Battery
LandmarkReached down the North Head Trail from the tower, or on foot along the harbour if the cliff path is closed. Houses on rock, right on the water.
- 18:30
Duke of Duckworth
EatA small pub off Duckworth Street with a fire, a good kitchen and a fair claim to being the heart of the town.
With more time: Fort Amherst sits on the opposite side of the Narrows, ten minutes by car, and gives you the view back at Signal Hill along with a lighthouse and the gun emplacements from the second war, when submarines were a real problem here.
Day 3 in St. John's
Quidi Vidi, a fishing village inside the city
Quidi Vidi is a working cove on the far side of Signal Hill, reached through an entrance in the rock barely wide enough for a boat, and although it is well inside the city limits it is a separate place entirely: a few dozen houses, fishing stages on the water, and a brewery in the old fish plant that makes a beer with iceberg water in it.
The brewery runs tours and has a taproom over the water. Around it are a couple of galleries in the old plant buildings, and the walk out to the gut where the boats come in takes ten minutes.
You can walk here from Signal Hill along the shore in half an hour if you have the legs, or it is a five minute taxi from downtown. From the village it is twenty minutes to the airport.
- 10:30
The Quidi Vidi Brewing Company
VisitTours run several times a day and last about half an hour. The taproom overlooks the cove and is open from late morning.
With more time: If you have a car and a spare two hours, drive out to Cape Spear instead. It is fifteen minutes south, holds the oldest surviving lighthouse in the province, and is the most easterly land in North America outside Greenland, which means the sunrise there is the first in the Americas.
Before you go
Getting in
St John's International is fifteen minutes from downtown and has flights from Toronto, Montreal, Halifax and, in summer, direct services from Dublin, London and elsewhere in Europe, which is a shorter hop than most people expect.
The ferry from North Sydney in Nova Scotia lands at Port aux Basques or Argentia and is an option only if you are bringing a car and have time to spare: Port aux Basques is a further nine hours of driving away across the island.
Remember the clock. Newfoundland runs half an hour ahead of Atlantic time and an hour and a half ahead of Toronto, which catches out roughly every visitor booking a connecting flight.
Getting around
Downtown is small and walkable and unbelievably steep. The streets go straight up from the harbour and the shortest route between two points frequently involves a staircase. Wear something with a sole.
Metrobus covers the city cheaply but not the peninsula. For Cape Spear, the sea stacks at Flatrock or anywhere further afield you need a car or a tour, and a hire car for one day is the best money you will spend here.
Taxis are plentiful downtown and generally cheaper than you expect.
Icebergs and whales
Icebergs calve off the Greenland ice sheet and drift south down what is called Iceberg Alley, arriving off this coast roughly from April to early June. Some years are spectacular and some produce almost nothing, so check a tracker before you build a trip around them.
Humpbacks arrive to feed on capelin from June and are usually around until August, along with minke, and puffins nest on the islands just south of the city in vast numbers over the same months. June is the month that gets you the most of all three.
Weather
This is the foggiest and one of the windiest cities in Canada, and the weather changes by the hour rather than the day. Pack a waterproof shell whatever the forecast says and add a warm layer on top of what you think you need.
July to September is the reliable window. Spring is cold and wet and worth it for the ice. Winter brings enormous amounts of snow, dumped in single storms locals call sheilas and worse.
St John's is a small city that behaves like a much older one, which it is, and the pleasure of it is not really in the sights. It is in the fact that a stranger will talk to you at a bar for an hour and then walk you to where you are going.
Give one evening entirely to that and one morning to the water, and the rest can look after itself.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is two nights enough?
- For the city, yes. For Newfoundland, absolutely not. If you can only give the island three days, spend them here and hire a car for one of them; if you can give it ten, drive out to Bonavista and Gros Morne.
- When will I see icebergs?
- Late April to early June, with May the safest bet, and it varies enormously year to year. There are online trackers showing what is currently off the coast, and it is worth checking before you commit.
- What is a screech-in?
- A tourist ceremony involving cheap rum, a recited line of dialect and kissing a cod. It is entirely daft, entirely voluntary and locals enjoy administering it enormously.
- Do I need a car?
- Not for the three days above. Hire one for a day if you want Cape Spear, the puffin colony at Witless Bay or anything beyond the city, all of which are worth it.
- What should I eat?
- Cod, in every form including tongues and cheeks. Also moose, partridgeberries, toutons for breakfast and a Jiggs dinner if somebody offers you one on a Sunday.