Day Seven – St. John's NL loop
Miles: 0


On Saturday we arranged to have a rental car for the day. I never thought it would come to this, but it was clear that the day was going to be a total wash out and we were on the island until Monday late afternoon. We had breakfast at the Hungry Heart Cafe and ventured out to see the sights. We were driving a rented Ford Escape so there wasn't much fun getting anywhere but it was raining pretty much the entire day. We started at Fort Amherst and walked the path up to the viewing area with our newly acquired umbrellas. The fort today is actually the second one built in this area, the first being built in the 1770s. The lighthouse and fort are on the southern side of the harbor entrance and it was a key defense position to defend against German U-Boats. Fortunately there was never any action there. Next we drove to the northern side of the harbor and went to view Signal Hill. This is where Marconi received the first Trans-Atlantic radio signal. The main building there is Cabot Tower which was built in 1898 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of John Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland and Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. The fog, rain, and wind made it far less than enjoyable but we made the best of it. It was well after noon and we were getting hungry so we went over to Quidi Vidi to visit their brewery having tasted their DayBoil IPA the night before. The brewery was really nice and we got seat on a window overlooking the water. On the back side of the brewery was a fish stand that served up some mean fish and chips. It may have been raining outside but we had found a nice spot and were in no hurry to leave. Next we drove over to Middle Cove Beach walked around very briefly. Middle Cove is famous for the annual Capelin spawning where thousands of these small silver fishes come to lay their eggs and get eaten by whales, birds, and other fish. Fortunately we missed the annual event by a couple of weeks. There is a nice observation deck near the beach where we stopped for some pics. Our last stop was at the Soggy Bay Ocean Sciences Center. We didn't do much more than take a few pics. We headed back to the hotel, dropped off the car and went to dinner at the Keg Steakhouse. This was a brewpub and served some pretty good beer. Afterwards we proceeded to Christian's bar and waited for our Screeching in to become honorary Newfies. The ceremony was a little silly but we had a good time with some others who had come for the same reason. We kissed the Cod drank some Screech and we were in. It had gotten late and we wanted to get riding early so we called it a night.