The Rooms And The Battery
Our first day of St. John’s. Maddi had to go to school in the morning, but I fell back asleep after she turned off her alarm and didn’t actually get out of bed until 9:00 when Dad came upstairs and gave me a stern lecture about being mature enough to set my alarm and getting out of bed. Well I most profusely apologize. The plan was to do all the touristy stuff in town today, since we had to be close for Maddi and also because the adults had a reservation at a very fancy restaurant for dinner. Our first stop was the Rooms, a museum depicting the history of Newfoundland and St. John’s area. It also had a great view of the harbour, signal hill and downtown, but we were not aloud to go
out on the balcony on the third floor to get pictures because of “weather conditions”. The Rooms got it’s name from the old fishing “rooms” that used to be set up on the wharf. We got a tour of the Husky Gallery and learned all about the history of cod fishing. Originally, men would travel across from Europe just for the fishing season and set up their own little fishing area, buildings and all, each year and then take it down before they set back out for home so no one would take over their spot the next year. The people who started to settle in the area were called livyers (live heres). Of course, they managed to overfish the cod and brought the local population of the fish down to about 1% of what it was historically. So they closed down most of the fisheries and set up a moratorium on fishing in the ’90’s. The economy of Newfoundland suffered a bit from this lack of fishing but they brought the population of cod up to about 15% of what it was historically and now they’re hoping for faster reproduction, since the fish are now so much bigger and
healthier than they were twenty years ago. After
the tour was over we wandered through all the galleries looking at signs and such. I read some plaques about the First Nations of the area, which included Mi’kmaq, Inuit, Innu and Beothuk, a people that is now extinct. By then it was about time for lunch so we decided to drive down to Petty Harbour, the childhood home of Alan Doyle who is the lead singer of Great Big Sea, for fish and chips. The chippy in town had a wait time of about 45minds however, so we took some pictures and head back to St. John’s instead for a shorter wait time. We ended up at Leo’s, which looks kind of iffy when you walk in but we were reassured that they had magnificent food. I had one piece of fish and one piece of chicken with fries, as well as a pineapple Crush, which I have heard a lot about. It’s very
sweet. The next stop was Signal Hill and the boys, Maureen, Mum and I had to pile into their SUV because Peter went to pick up Madeleine from school since we had taken longer at lunch and in the Rooms than we had originally planned. Along the way to the Battery the five of us stopped on Gower Street to get a close up look at the famed Jellybean Houses. It was very cute and we were soon underway once again. Maddi, Peter and Gigi joined us on the hill shortly after we arrived and we walked around, read some signs and took some pictures. Then we went into the tower that guards the hill to take a look out from the top. It’s basically a lookout tower taken from a fortress wall and plopped down on top of this giant hill to protect the city of St. John’s against attacks from the ocean. Once we’d had a good look around we drove down the little fishing village of Quidi Vidi that, overtime, has been swallowed up by and become a community of, St. John’s. It’s actually place around a freshwater lake and is also on a little inlet of the ocean that sometimes
gets blocked by wandering icebergs. We walked around for a bit and checked out a little craft market thing. We found out that there was a kitchen party going on that night but the adults had a fancy dinner reservation so we couldn’t join in with the locals. Back at the house, the two sets of parents got all formal-ed up for their night out and Maddi ordered some pizza us children being left behind. Isaac was cleaning out the backyard and he watched the Man of Steel before heading to bed. Maddi and I talked some and then watched Gone Girl, which was really good and also Neil Patrick Harris (need I say more?) but I still haven’t read the book. The two of us were just getting into bed when the older ones got back very loudly. Peace out m8s.
