We awoke on Saturday feeling that the world was our... well, lobster, maybe. I don't like oysters much. The whole day stretched before us with nary a committment!The sun was shining, the birds were singing, I realized that I'd left my jacket at the hall the night before in time to interrupt the decorator's tear-down crew to let us in and grab it - everything was coming up Joneses! The only downside was that since it was Saturday, nothing was open at the University Centre. No coffee to be had at all. We'd been planning on breakfast downtown, but the inability to even score coffee flummoxed us a little bit. Mostly undeterred, we caught a bus into downtown and returned to Yellowbelly for breakfast where Adam had a delicious Eggs Benedict with the sweetest ham I've ever gotten to have a bite of, and I had a lobster hash that was decadent in ways I usually associate only with chocolate.
We also discovered (by reading the blurb on the menu) that it is one of the oldest pubs in St John's - and the building, rebuilt after the fire of 1846 and was one of the few mercantile buildings to survive the fire of 1894 (they do seem to have bad luck with fires in this town- it's why in a town that was actually founded in the 1600s, everything looks late-Victorian!) and that the term Yellowbellies refers to an Irish faction from county Wexford, who tied yellow sashes around their waists in a hurling match against the Cornish champions. When they won, the King was heard to say "Well done, Yellowbellies!"
After breakfast, we started wandering around downtown, and the weather decided to stop cooperating. First it was spitting a little rain (no problem, we can take it, we're from Vancouver) and we kept looking around - taking lots of pictures as the rain got heavier and heavier... we'd been informed that the newly married couple were meeting up with family and friends at a park to play frisbee - Kathleen has certainly been a great influence on Benton/Tim's sportiness! - but as the rain got worse (and so did our moods) we were less and less inclined to try to figure out where this alleged park was.
Finally, we ducked into The Duke of Duckworth (a pub off Duckworth street, in one of those "lanes" formed by stairs up from Water to Duckworth) for a pint and to get out of the rain, which by this time was pelting down like crazy - we wouldn't have been at all surprised to see a parade of animals coming 2 by 2 towards an ark of some kind.
Apparently that was the magic charm we needed, because by the time we'd had a pint and had decided on a "rainy day in St John's" activity (The Rooms Museum, archives, art gallery and restaurant that was a reasonable walk from where we were and on the bus route back to the University- more about that later) the rain had stopped and the sun was coming out. We realised that we wouldn't really be able to get our money's worth out of the Rooms before they closed, but now that the sun was out, we figured that instead of just walking up to Bonaventure Avenue (where the bus stops across from The Rooms) we would instead walk all the way back to the University (which, it turns out, is a beautiful walk (in the sunshine) along Bonaventure, and only takes about a half hour.
We also were able to ascertain that the park where this Frisbee game was meant to have been taking place was only about another 2 minutes past the University, and that there was a little shopping centre right across from it, where we could buy a few things that we'd gotten rid of to get on the plane - sunscreen, shaving cream, that kind of stuff, as well as some laundry detergent, since all our clothes were by this time, in need of laundering.
So we went back to the University, changed into dry clothes, and went over to the park, where the frisbee mayhem was wrapping up. Tim/Benton and Kathleen invited us out for a hike the next day, which we thought might be fun, (more about that later too!) and we made plans to at least meet up for a pint before we went to the airport. Then we parted ways and headed over to the shopping centre.
There was a Shoppers, a few gift shops (where I found some great ideas for Elda's birthday present) several fast food/pizza places (after all, it's just around the corner from campus), a pretty skeezy pub, and, strangely, a mexican restaurant called Quintana's. We were hungry for some dinner, so we decided to give it a try.... at least it would be a funny story, right?
Well, it was a funny story. But not the kind we thought. Instead, it was the funny story about one of the best mexican meals we've ever had, hidden away in a weird little strip mall in St Johns, Newfoundland. The Habanero Burrito that Adam had was so spicy it almost broke even him, and yet it was apparently so delicious that he ate the whole thing, sweating all the way. I had the "Mexican Flag" - a cheese enchilada with red sauce, a beef enchilada with green sauce and a chicken flauta with delicious creamy sauce topped with raisins and almonds. It was amazing!
Stuffed full of delicious food, we stopped in at the gas station, and realized that in Newfoundland, you can get beer at gas stations (we were wondering about why we hadn't seen a liquor store so close to campus, when drinking age is only 19!) - so we got some, went back to our room, watched a movie and did our laundry at the residence, just like college students!
No comments:
Post a Comment