St John's, Newfoundland

After flying to St John's, Newfoundland at the eastern-most point of the continent, you start to get a feel of the sheer magnitude of Canada and the incredible variety of scenery that exists here.

St John's is considered by many to be Canada's cultural capital and there's certainly a vibrant, creative feel to the community. We enjoyed exploring some of the cool shops and cafes in the city and had an authentic 'Newfie' dinner of codfish and scrunchions at O'Reilley's pub, while a local musician sang traditional Newfoundland folk songs.

The so-called 'jellybean row' of brightly coloured Victorian townhouses in St John's is very charming. It's said that the vibrant hues enabled sea captains returning from voyage to correctly identify their house through the thick fog, however I've also read that the colourful paint was part of a revitalisation project in the late 1970s.

We drove north along the coast from St John's to visit a couple of sleepy seaside villages and do some iceberg spotting. Fortunately we were able to see two large icebergs directly off the coast of St John's at nearby Signal Hill. When the ocean temperatures rise in spring, the glaciers in Greenland start to break up and the resulting icebergs migrate south through 'iceberg alley' towards Newfoundland. The 'bergs are at least 10,000 years old and incredibly, the visible 'tip of the iceberg' (so to speak) is only 10% of its entire mass. We took an iceberg cruise to get even closer and it was quite magical to see these beautiful formations just floating along.