St. John's and the Jelly Beans

After breakfast we were on our way up to downtown St John's.  We wandered around for a couple of hours and had a great walk in such an old city.  There are a great many of beautiful old churches there, but the highlight for me was the houses they call the jelly beans.  These are highly colourful houses most often attached if not always.  Each one painted so brightly with many different colours.  There are 100's if not 1000's of these housed around old St. John's.  It is hard not to keep taking photos. I absolutely so enjoyed walking amongst them.

We had the good fortune to see a painting crew working so carefully on these lovely heritage houses.  They are kept up beautifully and are such a huge part of what tourists expect to see when visiting St. John's.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After St. John's, we were on our way to Cape Spear to visit the eastern most point in Canada.  Definitely a photo opportunity!

 

 

 



These 3 pics show our first close up and personal visit with a lighthouse.  We didn't go inside, but walking around the outside – it was very amazing to

stand at the bottom and look up.  Along with the rise in elevation, there were 201 steps up to where the lighthouse stood and the same coming down.  Not sure how many stairs would be inside, but we will save doing that for another day and a different lighthouse!

 

In the harbour, we saw lots of whale spouts - probably minke whales in fairly close to shore in the harbour and very close to the whale watching boat - the shrieks from the boat told the tale.  Nothing that we could take pictures of from the shore, but exciting to watch none the less.  

We headed next to Quidi Vidi - There is a brew pub there that was having a kitchen party - a truly Newfoundland experience.  It was very busy and there were no seats.  So we left there and went to Portugal Cove and ate at a place called Wild Horses - really good fish and chips.  They had about 6 slot machines with menus to play about 6 different games.  I walked up to the first machine and pressed the menu button to see what games there were, suddenly the reels started spinning.  A fellow that was at the bar getting a beer, said - oh that's my machine - I'm playing that one.  He wasn't annoyed, just saying....I apologised profusely and then bells were ringing - he said ah, doesn't matter you won me money!  It was a good laugh.  I still don't know how it happened that by pressing the menu button I set everything in motion but fortunately no harm done.

After dinner, we were on our way back to the inn. I nodded off in the car and was so very glad to get home - or back to our rooms at the Inn. Even in the short time we have been here, it does feel like home.  After fiddling with the blog for a bit, I went upstairs to go bed and at 10:45 I hit the pillow and I'm sure by 10:46 I was sound asleep.  Thank goodness Shannon travels with earplugs!