September 29th, 2008: St. John, Newfoundland
Bob: After an early breakfast we watched our ship being piloted into the harbor at St. John's, which was quite exciting as the harbor mouth, called "The Narrows", was in fact quite narrow, indeed not a lot bigger than the width of the Crown Princess. The headlands on either side were rocky and sheer, resulting in a rather dramatic view. On the southern side of The Narrows we saw Ft. Amherst and a small but pretty lighthouse. The headland on the northern side was called "Signal Hill" and was noticeably higher. Signal Hill is where Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless signals. At the highest point of Signal Hill was the grey stone Cabot Tower.
|
Monika: We sailed through a narrow passage into the bay that held St. John early in the morning. On our starboard side Signal Hill was partially shrouded in fog - it was the best view of it that we would get all day - on the port side we could see the lighthouse and fort at Amherst up on a hill with waves crashing all around it. |
Bob: As we entered the harbor it became clear that St. John's harbor, although small compared to Hamburg, London, etc., is still very much an active seaport. We docked right beside Water Street in the heart of the old downtown area, and just beyond our ship was docked some kind of freighter. Out in the middle of the harbor was a container ship terminal, and across the harbor I saw what looked like an active rock quarry site and ships docked there, presumably to load cargoes of quarried rock.
|
Monika: We docked right in the middle of town. Next to us was a wooden dock that I would not want to have walked on. But our dock was concrete and looked quite sturdy. |
Bob: Since it was overcast and a bit threatening, when we returned to our cabin to prepare for the day we donned our rain jackets and bundled together our cameras and some eggs and rolls we had purloined from the breakfast buffet in a backpack. When we finally ventured on shore, we saw that the Newfoundlanders had quite a welcoming committee for us out on the dock. A girl with two dogs, a black Labrador and a huge, shaggy, slobbery (but friendly) black Newfoundland was on the pier and we really enjoyed petting the dogs, who seemed a bit surprised at all this attention from a bunch of strangers. Besides the girl, there was a cadre of at least 4-5 people handing out maps, bookmarks, and Canadian flag hatpins and giving advice to the incoming flood of tourists. Such a nice welcome!
|
Monika: When we walked off the ship we were greeted by members of the tourist information who handed us maps and even small pins with the Canadian flag. There were two black dogs to greet us, an enormous Newfoundlander and a Labrador, of course. We thought we would walk uphill to the GeoCenter we had heard about and continue out to Signal Hill. But first we found a little cafe with internet. It was free for customers, so I had a cup of coffee and a scone and Bob had a bagel, while we were catching up on our email and letting kith and kin know that we were safely back on the North American continent.
|
Bob: Although the Geo Center is basically one, large, underground exhibit hall, we ended up spending between 2 and 3 hours there and didn't even get to see all the exhibits. An exhibit gallery on oil and natural gas formation and extraction sponsored by Exxon-Mobil was fascinating. As the Gentle Reader can probably guess, Exxon-Mobil is not, to be honest, one of my favorite corporations, but they certainly do know their business and that gallery was full of new information for me. I was not, for example, aware that the exact composition of the petrochemicals formed underground was in part due to the depth and "cooking temperature" that the original hydrocarbons were subject to.
|
Monika: Halfways up was the GeoCenter, a museum dedicated to the geology of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was a fascinating museum. We learned about all the different rocks of Labrador and Newfoundland and that they were formed even before Pangea. Newfoundland, in particular, can be divided into three parts: East Newfoundland was part of Gwondana, West Newfoundland was part of Laurentia, and the middle was the sea between these two ancient continents. So some of the rocks were truly, as Carl Sagan would have put it, "billions and billions" of years old. The rock examples they had were perfect specimens for whatever they wanted to show.
|
Bob: We were also sidetracked by the Titanic exhibit that attempted to accurately document all the contributory causes to the Titanic disaster. The exhibit laid out the entire sequence of events from J.P. Morgan acquiring the White Star Line and the construction of the Olympic and the Titanic to the sequence of horribly bad operational decisions that resulted in the final disaster. Cheap, single-hull design, way too small a rudder for quick maneuvering, watertight compartments that where open at the top, insufficient lifeboats for the passengers, recruiting crew from pubs the night before departure, failure to hold lifeboat drills, lookouts without binoculars, independent and ill-trained wireless operators, Captain's ignoring of reports of icebergs ahead from other ships, launching many lifeboats half-empty, and on and on. Goodness gracious, what a shameful litany! |
Monika: Curiously enough, the museum also housed a rather detailed exhibit on the sinking of the Titanic. It details the events and where to put the blame - there is a lot of blame to go around, the only innocent seemed to be the poor iceberg that just happened to be there. |
Bob: The fog was, if anything, thicker when we finally exited the museum, so we gave up on walking up to Signal Hill and instead walked back into St. John's looking for a grocery store to buy some beer (Monika) and pretzels (me). That turned out to be surprisingly difficult, but we enjoyed seeing some of the old scenic buildings of St. John's while we were searching for convenience stores and so forth. We also stopped off at the Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, and spent quite a bit of time admiring the nice interior and beautiful old stained glass windows from the late 1800s. |
Monika: After seeing the exhibits, we sat down in the cafeteria - it was closed, but had chairs and some tables available - and munched on an apple, egg, and roll we had brought along. Thus fortified, we went outside. By now it was not only foggy, but actually slightly rainy, Hamburger Nieselwetter. Signal Hill was in the clouds, and the view from there, probably was nothing to write home about. So we turned around and went back down to the town looking for a grocery store with pretzels, mouthwash, and beer. Unfortunately, the bigger stores, like Canadian Tire, were father out of town than we were willing to walk, and in town we only found little convenience stores. So we did some sightseeing instead.
|
Bob: My GPS finally guided us to a grocery store that did have both beer and pretzels, so we wrapped all that up in our backpack and trundled back down the street to reboard the ship. The fog had increased to become a real "pea souper", and I couldn't even see all of the ship docked right in front of us much less ships across the harbor. Our captain prudently waited until the fog lifted around midnight to make his departure, but I was already well asleep by then. |
Monika: On our perambulations we found a rather unique looking CD store, that featured native Newfoundland music. Bob picked up two CDs that looked interesting. We can't wait to listen to them. We also went into another little convenience store, and they finally had pretzels. The beer was still only available in 6 packs, but they did have a rather large bottle of raspberry ale that looked promising. So with our hoard safely stored in my backpack, we went back on ship saying good buy to statues of a Labrador and a Newfoundlander on the way. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Baltic Cruise | Map of Transatlantic Cruise | Epilog |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||