In many respects, Newfoundland is an impossible destination. Not because there aren’t enough spectacular places to visit or interesting things to experience, but because the province has more natural beauty per square kilometre than your typical country.
To cap it all off, Newfoundland is a surprisingly big island, and the network of roads is not as extensive as might be hoped. In other words, a reasonable visit takes time. One quick trip doesn’t even scratch the surface of the surface. I’ve been to Newfoundland a profound number of times—eight in total, including my latest visit, a marathon family vacation that took place in record-breaking heat last August.
Finally, after countless miles travelled, mainly in the eastern and central parts of the province, it’s safe to say that I need to map out a ninth trip—eight is just not enough. Here, then, is my best attempt at encapsulating what Newfoundland has to offer. Not all that it has to offer, mind you, just a representative sampling. Let’s go.
Three Great Drives
There’s a reason why one of the great competitive driving adventures in the world, Targa Newfoundland, is based here. The place boasts countless stunning coastal towns and the roads to get there are often curvy, undulating and downright challenging. This is a part of the world that rewards you with interesting roads and spectacular scenery around many a bend.
On this most recent trip, we discovered the Irish Loop for the first time. This 312-kilometre sojourn starts in St. John’s and heads south along the eastern coast and encircles the Avalon Wilderness Preserve. Highlights along the route include the ridiculously picturesque town of Ferryland, the Cape Race Lighthouse — where the distress signal for the HMS Titanic was received — and St. Vincent’s Beach, one of the best places in Newfoundland to view whales from dry land.
The Irish Loop can be especially challenging, though, because it’s not a part of the province that many tourists visit—yet. We had the great good fortune to be introduced to the Keeper’s Kitchen, a B&B in the small town of St. Shott’s that just opened last year.
The proprietors, Michelle and Reidar, are not only brilliant hosts, they’re also gourmet chefs and inspired tour guides. After a fantastic dinner and a sound sleep, they walked with us to the rocky coast near Cape Pine, where we watched seals basking on the rocks. Michelle comes from a long line of lighthouse keepers, thus the name of their establishment, and the wireless station at Cape Race—the Myrick Wireless Interpretation Centre—is named after her family.
Another route with plenty of history is the Baccalieu Coastal Drive, which skirts the coastline of the Avalon Peninsula. Another fortunate break was to discover a company called Cape Race Newfoundland, a local outfit owned and operated by Newfoundlanders from way back. Their focus is on creating authentic and one-of-a-kind experiences in the province, and they proudly claim that no custom trip designs are alike.
Proprietor Ken Sooley is a man with an exhaustive contact list and a fierce love of his province. This affection is so strong, his company now owns seven original bolthole homes in St. John’s, Bonavista and Trinity, from which his guests begin their carefully planned visits. He kindly squeezed in a two-night stay for us at E.J. Sooley House, the place his grandfather called home, in Heart’s Delight on Trinity Bay.
On the surface of it, the idea of persuading three kids to stay in a home without a TV, Wi-Fi or even a telephone is a terrible idea. But they quickly grew to love the space, running around in the front yard with a stick and a ball, hanging laundry to dry on the line, playing cards at night, and venturing out with fishing poles during the day. We watched the sun set on the bay from the home’s backyard with a glass of wine, an utterly peaceful experience.
Ken also pointed us in the direction of Harbour Grace, some 40 kilometres west of Heart’s Delight. This is the place where Amelia Earhart took off on for her solo flight across of the Atlantic Ocean in 1932, becoming the first woman to accomplish the feat. Due to its relative proximity to Europe, Newfoundland had become a prime starting point for such adventures.
There’s a statue honouring her accomplishments, a proud monument set in front of a Douglas DC-3 named “The Spirit of Harbour Grace.” This was not the aircraft used for Earhart’s historic flight, but it’s another marker honouring the pioneering tradition of the town. The town itself is equally enthralling. A former fishing outpost, A former fishing outpost, Harbour Grace has been hit with extensive fire damage over the years, but many historic buildings remain. There’s a faded glory to the place and enough life in its streets to suggest better times ahead.
Just across Trinity Bay from the Baccalieu Coastal Drive is another picturesque drive, the Discovery Trail. Here, again, there are countless quaint seaside villages to visit. We settled in for two nights at the glorious Goose Cove Retreat, the most spectacular private home we’ve ever visited. This luxury home, divided into three segments painted in different colours, had absolutely everything needed for a truly restful stay: a gourmet kitchen, sauna, hot tub, fire pit, bicycles and a waterside dock.
From this home base, we embarked on an epic whale-watching tour hosted by Sea of Whales Adventures, launching out of the town of Trinity. You can read all about seeing whales from the comfort of your couch, but until you’re close enough to worry about being capsized by one of these gigantic creatures, you haven’t lived the experience. During the three-hour tour, we followed along the shoreline and tracked a small pod as they searched for capline to eat. Whenever the people on board the boat cheered the whales, they humpbacks complied by breaching and gliding alongside just long for everyone to take a snapshot to two. It was so surreal an experience, it seemed as if it were staged.
The Discovery Trail is located in the Bonavista Peninsula, which received designation as a UNESCO World Geopark in 2020, one of only five in Canada. From the town of Trinity, the road ducks into and out of seaside settlements en route to Bonavista. This historic town, nestled near the very northern tip of the peninsula, is similar to Harbour Grace in that both places are on the verge of becoming must-see destinations for every visitor.
Our planning fell short here: There was for more to see than we managed. We didn’t get to the Dungeon Provincial Park or the Tickle Cove Sea Arch or to Bird Island, home to one of the largest puffin colonies in the world. We didn’t want to ever leave the area, but the lure of more adventures in other parts of Newfoundland proved too strong. Next time.
Three Epic Restaurants
There was a time, not so very long ago, when Newfoundland cuisine consisted mainly of some form of cod, deep-fried toutons, and white bread slathered with butter and molasses. While these ingredients have maintained their grip, many other flavours have been added to the mix and the restaurant scene in the province has now reached the level of high art.
One of the great drivers behind this change has been the Fogo Island Inn. This luxury hotel, perched on stilts on a rocky outcropping, opened in 2013 and changed the game forever. The inn’s 21 guest suites all have views of the ocean, but the window-filled dining room offers the best seat in the house.
Here, the focus is on sustainable food with a menu engineered in accordance with the Inn’s designated seven seasons: winter, pack ice, spring, trap berth, summer, berry and late fall. Our summer sampling included fresh baked bread, snow crab, pea soup and halibut—every dish was a modern marvel.
When renowned chef, the late Anthony Bourdain, visited Newfoundland for his show Parts Unknown, he called on St. John’s chef Jeremy Charles to show him the lay of the land. The co-owner of the award-winning Raymonds and the Merchant Tavern, Charles was named the best chef in Canada in 2018; our egg-fuelled brunch in the latter spot hinted at the reasons why.
The chef, who studied and worked away from home for a decade, found the draw of Newfoundland too great to ignore for long. “I live on a beautiful island surrounded by amazing stuff, I hunt, I fish, I cook and I’m with my family,” he said in an interview for the Parts Unknown blog, “It’s the dream, I guess.”
Nestled in the heart of Quidi Vidi Village, a fishing village just short drive from downtown St. John’s, the Mallard Cottage is as good a restaurant as this country has to offer. The restaurant is set in a 300-year-old thatched-roof structure, a national historic site that’s recorded as being one of the oldest wooden buildings in North America.
The setting is special and so, too, is the food. Named one of Canada’s Best 100 Restaurants no fewer than six times, the menu focuses on locally sourced ingredients and changes according to what’s immediately available. Our dinner there, enjoyed in the backyard on one of the warmest nights of the summer, was ridiculously varied in its range of flavours.