Welcome back to Assemblage’s travel section, where I share itineraries and recommendations in almost painful detail, with a particular focus on interesting local businesses, food, and design.
This week, I solely exist to let you know about Newfoundland, Canada - North America’s most underrated destination. This max 318-mile wide island somehow packs vignettes of all 7 continents into its smorgasbord of landscapes, a hint at its massive geological importance.
We’ll settle one thing first - Newfoundland’s location, which is often confused with that of Labrador, the part of mainland Canada it is inexplicably married to in a state of holy provincehood. The island is the easternmost land mass in North America, the first to witness the sun rise every day. If California’s endless view of the Pacific blurring into the horizon bestows a sense of possibility and unexplored frontier onto its residents and visitors, so to does Newfoundland’s position as the First to see the sun, the one to draw the proverbial curtains for the East Coast of North America and usher in a new day.
Putting things into context is like building a really cool fort, one with many different types of sheets and string lights being held up by lots of different kinds of furniture that your mom told you NOT TO MOVE. If you want to continue to build your Newfoundland-context fort, I recommend watching Season 11, Episode 3: Newfoundland of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, and Season 2, Episode 8: Sweet Vitriol of Severance, which was filmed in Bonavista, NL.
Newfoundland Itinerary:
Area 1: St. Johns
Accommodation: check in June 23, check out June 25
Day 1, June 23: ½ day Arrive at St John’s airport, St John’s
Day 2, June 24: St John’s
Day 3, June 25: drive to Gros Morne, see things on the way (about 7 hours)
Area 2: Gros Morne
Accommodation: check in June 25, check out June 29
Day 3, June 25: arrive late Gros Morne
Day 4, June 26: Gros Morne
Day 5, June 27: Gros Morne
Day 6, June 28: Gros Morne
Day 7, June 29: drive back to St John’s
Area 3: St. John’s
Accommodation: check in June 29, check out June 30
Day 7, June 29: arrive St Johns
Day 8, June 30: ½ day and fly home
We began our trip with a day and a half in St. John’s, the close-knit, grungy capital city situated on St. John’s harbor, one of the oldest and most important natural harbors in North America. Natural harbors may sound boring to the uninitiated, but they are breathtaking in real life - the largest one I have seen is the Port of Mahon, Menorca. Don’t sleep on natural harbors.
I highly recommend this adorable and cozy airbnb, whose speckled wood floors I will think about forever. The entire city is tiny and walkable, but very hilly - if you are replicating our Newfoundland itinerary in any way, I’d recommend renting a car. After checking into our airbnb we went for dinner at Portage, one of Canada’s 100 Best restaurants, a convivial place giving Newfoundland’s flora and fauna the elevated sharing-plates treatment. We dined on scallop crudo prepared in a Peruvian but also Southeast Asian style leche del tigre, succulent white asparagus, beef tartare with capers and anchovies wrapped in nori, fantastic ribeye with caramelized vegetables, and melt-in-your-mouth cod swimming with GIANT mussels in a savory pesto soup. I had the pleasure of trying my first Canadian wine - a Gamay from Nova Scotia. Service was fantastic.
We began the next day with a large pre-hike meal at The Grounds Cafe, a “farm to fork” cafe located in what is now my favorite style of hybrid business (i.e. bookstore-cafe, cafe-coworking space, shop/wine bar (a la Quarters), shoppy-shop/cafe (a la Popup Grocer), pizza hut/taco bell): A GARDEN STORE - CAFE RESTAURANT. We enjoyed giant, nourishing grain bowls, plates of eggs, pastries, and coffee before wandering around the greenhouses looking at tomato plants and flowering peonies asking to be taken home.
From there we drove to the Silver Mine Head Path, part of the long-distance East Coast Trail, and a great trail for an easy, ~2 hour long out-and-back hike. A very foggy, Twilight-core experience commenced:
Little did we know this was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the dramatic, sublime beauty that Newfoundland would have to offer. On our drive back to the airbnb we stopped at this majestically spooky black sand beach, called Middle Cove Beach, where our compulsive need to collect beach rocks began and would continue throughout the trip:
Before heading out for dinner, we did some browsing at Alexis Templeton Studio, a little store by ceramicist Alexis Templeton selling her own serveware and that of other Canadian potters. I left with a little espresso mug with a goose on it from Bronwyn Arundel.
Night 2 dinner was at Rabble, an eclectic place with very flavorful offerings - shrimp toast, which is often one of the best things on any menu, FRIED COD TONGUES (!!!!!), lobster tomato soup, cioppino, and fried halibut collar. The evening ended with stouts and a beautiful pavlova at Bannerman Brewing Co.
The next morning, we were to begin the long drive to Gros Morne National Park, stopping to see other towns and landscapes along the way. We decided on Bonavista, the site of the aforementioned Severance episode and apparently home to a particularly busy puffin mating site. We arrived in Bona Vista after ~3 hours of driving and had lunch at the quaint and cheerful oceanfront Bicycle Picnics Cafe + Bistro, which was transformed into a decrepit frozen coffee shop in Severance.
Post-lunch we drove to the puffin viewing site in Elliston, which consisted of plateaued, grassy cliffs expanding wide into the ocean, a blue-green dream world that reminded me of the Teletubbies utopia.
Onwards to Gros Morne. We arrived late, giant mountains shaded in oppressive darkness closing in as we drove further into the park. Highly recommend our airbnb, a clean + modern + comfortable cabin. I appreciated the availability of affordable, modern lodging options within the park, something that feels challenging in some US national parks, where your options are often prohibitively expensive and comfortable OR affordable and almost unlivable.
The next morning, after coffee and pastries at The Old Store Cafe (where we went every morning for strong lattes and the muffin of the day) we drove to the base of the Western Brook Fjord for a boat tour into the fjord. This involved a 30 minute stroll up to the mouth of Western Brook along an ethereal prairie dotted with Venus-flytrap like flowers with the giant fjord looming in the distance, all of it lending a feeling of prehistory.
90% of the attendees on the boat tour were delightfully happy retirees. The guide was fantastic, and the tour ended in a manic live rendition of the Irish Descendant’s “Rattlin Bog”, which everyone you’ve ever loved AND hated should be subject to hearing many times over.
Post fjord we spent some time in the Gros Morne National Park Visitor Center which is a lovely structure with a great gift shop, informative guides, and a helpful graphic laying out the different hikes + towns within the park. The day led us to the Tablelands hike, Gros Morne’s American-Southwest vignette - a rust-colored landscape filled with unusual plants, with panoramic views of Winter House Brook Canyon looming. Geology here marks a time when the continents of Africa and North America collided, pushing these rocks, originally beneath the ocean, to their present position on land.
We had dinner at Buoy & Arrow which highlighted local Newfoundland cuisine including some Native American recipes (they are Mi’kmaw owned and operated). Delicious lobster roll; the succulent, fresh lobster you’ll have in Gros Morne will be among the best of your life (makes sense for a place littered with lobster traps). Same thing with mussels - all GIANT. We were curious about moose and split the moose burger; I don’t recommend moose as a protein, too dry and gamey. I do recommend the lemon partridgeberry cake for dessert.
We had a beautiful appointment at 10 AM the next day: kayaking in Bonne Bay, a saltwater fjord filled with tuna, jellyfish, the occasional dolphin, and the rare whale. A deep-fried lunch of cod burgers and calamari at the Merchant Warehouse followed.
We followed lunch with my favorite hike of the trip, and Newfoundland’s Big Sur vignette: the Green Gardens Trail, which “begins on the open serpentine barrens of the Tablelands and descends through boreal forest to a fertile volcanic sea coast” - a journey through geologic time and the IRL version of that biomes map:
There is nothing better to do on Earth better than lie in the yellow-wildflower speckled meadows of Green Gardens, staring out into the blue sea.
We had a lobster dinner at the Twin-Peaks esque Fisherman’s Landing.
The next day was blocked off for the difficult Gros Morne Mountain Trail, the path to the park’s highest point (2644 ft). It begins with a long stretch through the forest, leading to signage right before the looong rock scramble warning the faint of heart to turn back:
The scramble, which will make you NEVER WANT TO SEE A ROCK AGAIN, gave way to a barren but beautiful Alpine-like environment on the flat summit with sweeping views of the Long Ridge Mountains and a gorge:
And the descent, which was thankfully assisted by stairs, revealed some gorgeous scenes as well:
We refueled from the grueling yet incredibly rewarding hike with dinner at the Gros Morne Inn, by far the best meal we had in the Park. The slow roasted lamb and seafood gragada were standouts. We ended the evening on their balcony overlooking the mountains, drinking tea and wrapped in blankets.
The next day we began the drive to St. Johns with a plan to stop in either Twillingate to see whales and icebergs or Dildo, a quaint hamlet with nothing funny about it. We landed on Dildo after my friend’s calls to local businesses in Twillingate inquiring about the abundance of whales turned up nil.
The Dildo universe involved a fantastic coffee shop, Dildo Coffee House, and a church-sponsored artisans market with a delicious selection of handmade silver jewelry. The dead, ripped up cod fish visible underwater at the harbor lended some doom to the otherwise cheerful atmosphere:
Upon returning to St. John’s, we promptly made our way to Christian’s Pub , home to the ancient order of the Screechers and the site of Anthony Bourdain’s own “screech-in” ceremony, the successful completion of which makes one an honorary Newfoundlander. The ceremony involves the imbibing and consumption of a shot of screech (a locally made rum), a slice of Newfoundland “steak” (fried bologna cooked in rum and sprinkled with cinnamon), and kissing a frozen, deceased Newfoundland cod. The ceremony at Christian’s Pub was warm, theatric, and memorable, particularly when the owner and proprietor Skipper Lukey toasted to Anthony Bourdain, who transformed Lukey’s life and business by featuring his pub on Parts Unknown.
Dinner at LIV followed the screech-in ceremony. LIV is a Pan-Asian fusion restaurant, the type of which only exists outside of major cities and takes an unpretentious and slightly off-kilter approach to Asian food. That is to say, a pan-Asian place in a small city feels like a warm hug.
We ended this night with gelato from Parlour Gelato + Coffee, which offered flavors like lavender latte, coconut creme brulee, blueberry etc.
For our last day, we began with delicious breakfast sandwiches and pourover coffees at Bannerman Brewing Co. Then, we hiked to the top of Signal Hill (site of the first transatlantic wireless transmission) to view St. John’s from above. Once the clouds cleared we made our way to Cape Spear Lighthouse and National Historic Site, the most easterly point in North America, overlooking the wild Atlantic ocean. At the base of the lighthouse is the lightkeeper’s residence, used from the 1830s to the 1950s:
Airport Tim Hortons for lunch ended our Newfoundland trip. I cannot recommend this island enough. It is rich with geologic history and offers a dizzying abundance of contrasting and disparate landscapes. It has the welcoming, nothing’s-serious essence of Margaritaville (complimentary), but instead of tropical and Floridian, it is imbued with flannel, pine trees, cod, some despondency, and the same heavy drinking. Sartre-silly nihilism mixed with island chill.