Downtown St. John's

In the afternoon we drove into St. John's, parked in a Sobey's parking lot and walked down to the harbour.

View back to Signal Hill and Cabot Tower

Rick has visited St. John's harbour many times with the Navy, and he had some interesting stories.  The Portuguese White Fleet, the sailboats that fished the Grand Banks, used to come into harbour and the streets were full of sailors from all over the world.

While we there the Polar Prince, the support ship for the doomed Titan submersible, was in dock, after the wreckage was discovered.

We also checked out the downtown shopping area on Wharf Street which is converted to a pedestrian mall for the summer.  Not too busy as tourist season doesn't start till July in Newfoundland.

The lilacs were just starting to bloom in late June.  

There was some complaining about the steepness of the streets were were climbing up, but it's hard to show it in a photograph.

We loved the colourful houses and the colourful murals.

I spotted these cute mailboxes on neighboring houses.

 As we were heading back to La Manche we got a call from the campground.  We're we going to vacate our campsite?  What?, we said, we have another night booked.  No you don't they said.  In a panic we realized that we had reservations that night at Notre Dame Provincial Park 400 km away.  We rushed back to take down our camp and drove all evening, arriving at 9 pm.