The "Rock"

We're on The Rock.  We've been here three days.  It's only taken us 39 years to get here.  We wanted to come, really badly, when we made our only cross country trip in a van back in 1973 with our young son, but when we got to Sydney, Nova Scotia, about two months into our travels, time and money constraints kept us from our goal.  So here we are now, savouring it more than we would have then. 

Why come to Newfoundland at all?  Here are a few of our reasons:
1.  THE PEOPLE:  They're friendly.  Genuinely friendly.  And they have a sense of humour as well as fascinating accents.  The accents in St. John's are fairly mild, faintly English but easier to understand than what we expected.  Now we've moved away from the city we've noticed in smaller places they're stronger and more reminiscent of Irish.
2.  THE TOWNS:   They have a sense of community.   Newfies have an annual award for "Tidy Towns" and we've seen a few where we are now in Western Newfoundland.  Some of these are hamlets but they all have a town hall, post office and community gathering place.  Most of the houses are dressed in their Sunday best with makeup on. They're not afraid of colour!   And who wouldn't want to visit a place with town names like Dildo, Heart's Delight, Heart's Content and, Witless Bay...and these are just in the Avalon Peninsula.  Where else would you find a highway named for an Olympic gold-medal curling team:  Team Gushue Highway, being funded by the Federal and Provincial Governments.
3.  THE HOUSES:  St. John's colourful Victorian row "jelly houses", Newfoundland salt boxes, brightly painted shacks in the fishing villages, "white-washed" coastal towns.  They are so different from our west coast architecture. 
4.  SEAFOOD:  Fresh caught lobster, mussels, halibut, cod and crab, and if you look hard you can find some that's not battered and deep fried. 
5.  TRAVEL POINTS:  Okay, it's as far as we could get for the least number of travel points, but that doesn't cheapen the experience.  It also takes as long to get here as it does to fly to London!

So we are here, enjoying the sun and learning about the land.  On the next post we'll fill you in on St. John's and Gros Morne (where we are now.)