Thursday, July 9, 2009 – Day 35
I slept great in my lower bunk on the ferry to Newfoundland. I don’t know if it was because I was soooo tired or if it was because the ferry rocked me to sleep but I had a nice deep sleep.
We had plenty of time to sleep in as we were not scheduled to arrive in Newfoundland until 1pm. We took our time in the morning and I was happy to see that I was able to use the internet on my laptop to catch up on posting blogs and photos to our online adventure. Although the internet connection is touch and go (disconnects frequently) I had plenty of time so my hour of work took about 3 hours to complete.
We arrived in Newfoundland about 1 hour late due to a late departure. As soon as we exited, we were sure to stop at the billboard welcoming our family to Newfoundland for a photograph before stopping off at the tourist information centre. It must have taken us 1 hour with all the stops we made in the first 10 km, I was beginning to think we would never make it to St. John’s. Then we hit the road construction area. In the end we reached St. John’s just before 5pm as the attractions were starting to close down. Fortunately however, the National Historic Site interpretation centre at Signal Hill was open until 6pm and so we were able to tour around and watch the short movie before they closed.
Signal Hill is an old strategic hilltop overlooking St. John’s and its harbour. From there one can see all around the city, harbour and countryside. Since the 18th century it has been used to defend and protect the city of St. John’s. We climbed the small three story tower build in 1900 at the top of the hill for some breathtaking photos of the surrounding area. From here we could see North America’s most Easterly point, Cape Spear. As we were leaving we had the kids photos taken by “Tourist Shot-on-the-Spot”. Here they took our photos and printed them on postcards in their solar powered minivan, ready for us to send off in the mail.