Around 8am we have fantastic pancakes for breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant. Our waitress advises us the same restaurant for dinner as the Canadian couple we saw last night, the Gypsy Tea House. We ask the concierge to make a reservation for us. He will leave a message on the answering machine as it is not open yet.

We leave and drive to Bay Bulls where we have an appointment at O’Brien’s Whale and Bird Tours and on our way Nathalie sees a moose next to the road but we are not able to take pictures.

At O’Brian’s we buy our tickets which we had reserved in advance from home and we have some time left to do some shopping in their shop.

Around 11.15am we get on board and it is quite a bigger boat than a few days ago so much more people on it. On the boat we are entertained by the local singer with some great Irish folk songs. We are happy for this distraction as it is very cold on the boat and no whales to spot.

We sail along the western coast of Gull Island where we see all kinds of birds such as razorbills, northern gannets, gulls and finally puffins. The puffins are so small and the boat is moving so much because of the waves that it is very hard to take pictures. Photographing small birds is difficult, photographing small birds from a boat is extremely difficult!

Then we leave Gull Island and sail to the east coast of Green Island but we see only razorbills and gulls.

Around 1pm we are back and as soon as we leave the boat it starts to rain. We decide to have lunch at O’Brian’s restaurant. It is extremely busy and we have to wait a bit for a table. Finally we have a table and have a nice portion of fish & chips.

In the meantime the weather is still bad and we drive back to St. Johns. We pass Petty Harbour, but unfortunately there is too much fog to see anything. Then we drive on to Cape Spear (National Historic Site) where you can see a very beautiful but also the oldest working lighthouse (since 1836) in Canada. There are still coastal batteries from World War II which protected the access to St. John’s. Both are hard to see because of the fog. We only managed to take a foggy picture of the second lighthouse.

We continue our drive to Cahill Point, the road to Fort Amherst, but still we have bad weather. We drive on to Quidi Vidi Lake but we cannot get out of the car without being soaked. We drive back to our hotel and pass some beautiful colored houses of which we just manage to take some pictures.

Around 5.30pm we are back in our room and see that we have a message on the answering machine. The concierge confirms us that the restaurant has been booked for tonight.

We walk to the Gypsy Tea Room and had a great piece of meat.

Then we walk back to the hotel where we have a long chat with some of the employees (at the front desk and the concierge). These people here are so friendly! The all advise us the restaurant Oliver’s for tomorrow and we ask them to make the reservation. Then we go to bed…

Daytrip approx. 103 km