Sunday, June 14 – All Things Most Newfoundland-ish

Diane

Having flown from Montreal to St. John’s, the first thing I noticed when flying over southern Newfoundland is how riddled with streams, lakes, and ponds the land is. Minnesota may be the land of 10,000 lakes, but I bet Newfoundland could give them a run for their money and, maybe, outstrip them by far. No pictures of that, unfortunately. It didn’t occur to me to take a picture out the airplane window.

In the city of St. John’s, the most obvious characteristic is that sooo many of the houses are painted bright, screaming colors, which makes for a very festive-looking street. I know we posted a picture already, but here’s some more.

In more rural areas, garbage bins are ubiquitous. Everyone has a bin on the corner of their driveway at the edge of the road. While some look like little houses or just plain boxes, the majority, I think, are hexagonal tubes laid on their sides with doors that give the garbage collectors access to the bags of garbage inside. I guess the bears aren’t quite bright enough to open the trap doors.

Still, everywhere there’s rocks strewn all over and embedded in the ground. Newfoundland is called “The Rock,” and it’s really an apt descriptor since the whole place is one giant rock with a little soil on top and lots of rocks of all sizes scattered across the landscape.

As far as Newfoundlanders go, we couldn’t have met nicer people. While the regional accent gives us a bit of trouble in understanding them, everyone we’ve met has been lovely to us. The waitresses (yes, they’ve all been female) have called us “darling,” “honey,” and sweetie” at every meal, and, somehow, it hasn’t been off-putting in the least. Everyone we’ve met has been so welcoming and just plain nice.