Newfoundland 5, Canada

We ended up spending more time in St. John’s than we expected. We thought we were scheduled to take the ferry back to Sydney, Nova Scotia on Monday. We were mistaken. And the next ferry was not scheduled back to Sydney until Thursday night. It could have been a lot worse. We loved Newfoundland including St. John’s. So we made the best of it as there was still more we wanted to do in this unique area. We were comfortable in our dorm room at Memorial University which was centrally located.

 

We decided to go to the Johnson Geo Centre as we hadn’t had time to spend there previously. We were under the impression that the museum was mostly for kids. Truthfully we weren’t expecting much so we were very pleasantly surprised with the exhibits and lectures/talks.  The Centre is a geological interpretation centre located on Signal Hill. The exhibits we visited included one about ocean drilling platforms and the Titanic. We know the Titanic sunk because of a collision with an iceberg. However, this exhibit went further into detail of the actual causes of the sinking – one important one was Greed. This was the second exhibit we had been to regarding the Titanic while in Canada.

We particularly enjoyed the lectures on the geological history of Newfoundland. We were able to touch an iceberg. The lecturer/scientist had a small portion of an iceberg in the museum’s storage freezer. The same scientist gave a lecture on the solar system and I learned facts that were not taught to me in grade school. I always thought that Saturn was the only planet in our solar system that had rings. Boy was I wrong! There are four giant gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Apparently Saturn has the largest ring system which was known for a long time. However it was not until the 1970’s that rings were discovered around the other gas planets. Did you know this???

Since we now had extra time in St. John’s we decided to participate in the infamous screeching in ceremony. It is a non-obligatory ceremony performed on non-Newfoundlanders (known to Newfoundlanders as “come from away” or “mainlander.”)

Now that we had the time, we didn’t want to miss out on such an iconic Newfoundland tradition. The ceremony involves a shot of screech, a short recitation in “Newfie” and the kissing of a cod. In our case, the cod was frozen. We participated in this at a bar on famous “George Street.” This is a small street in St. John’s that is known for its many bars, restaurants, pubs and music venues.

 

So we left Thursday morning to make our way to Argentia to catch the ferry we did not want to miss a second time. It took about two hours to get there. We boarded the ferry at 5 pm. This ferry crossing was not nearly as pleasant as our trip to Port aux Basque’s which was about 7 hours. We had traveled across Newfoundland so were leaving from a different location. This was an overnight crossing and we didn’t arrive into port until 7 am the next day.  Upon arrival we stopped for breakfast and went back to our trailer and took a long nap.