Vertical Orchestras and Jellybean Rows

Just one of the many streets of jellybean houses, so called because of their bright colors.

So here we are, truckin' along in St. John's.  I think we are more or less adjusting to being in the city and it is really cool but it's also tiring.  I am enjoying it more than Krissy, no doubt.  She is itching to get back into the wilderness (city mouse has gone country, i do believe).  As a compromise, we plan to leave St. John's at the end of this month, rather than stay here until mid-August.  Between now and then we will see as much of the Avalon Peninsula as we can and then, around the last weekend of the month, we will probably head back to the Skerwink Hostel for another week or two, if that can work out.

Life at the City Hostel is very different from Skerwink.  There is no doubt about that.  To start, there is no one on staff here.  The whole place is run, at least on site, by volunteers like us.  There are three of them - Martin, Felix, and Chloe.  They are all quite nice and we've had some good chats with them but we haven't really hung out all that much.  I mean, hopefully that can change and we can have some beers and a laugh but, without any good common-room area, it's really hard to get the opportunity.  I will hand it to them - they dealt with that bedbug situation quite well, and much better than we would have (we would've been out of here so fast...).  And that issue seems to be resolved and the bedbugs are nowhere to be found.  The first sign of them still here and we will take off, no matter what's going on.  Hopefully that won't have to happen.

We last left off on Saturday night and I will apologize in advance for us not having more photos to share with you.  We just haven't been going to the kinds of places where we are usually inspired to take photos but, while we are in the city, we will try and be better at that.  So yeah, we woke up on Sunday and had a lazy morning until we saw that Rebel Without A Cause was playing at the theatre at the Avalon Mall at 12:55 so we hauled ourselves over there and that was fantastic.  It was a great movie when I watched it on a TV but it is spectacular on the big screen. I would like to see more classic films in theatres.  That's the way they're supposed to be seen.  Afterwards we went to the arcade where we had an epic air hockey game that resulted in me smashing my thumbnail.  Ouch.  We also went to a game store and got our own copy of Quirkle which, at least to us, is very exciting.  We shall play it with some of you one of these days.  We also went on an epic search for new shoes for me but it was to no avail.  I am picky.

As I mentioned before, the Shakespeare By The Sea festival is going on right now and Sunday evening was the premiere performance of Taming Of The Shrew at Bannerman Park.  So we went.  It was amusing.  Some of the acting was pretty decent, at least for the park, and some of it was a bit too North American for Shakespeare.  It was pretty chilly that evening.  Only in Newfoundland can you see Shakespeare in the Park on the 6th of July and have to be bundled up.  Actually the weather here has been spectacular.  During the day it's actually quite hot, and also humid.  But when the wind blows, it blows cold.  And the evenings get a bit chilly.  It's basically what Spring is like at home but without all the pollen.  Which means it's just about perfect.

Anyway, so we saw the show and it was fun.  I wish we had photos from it but we did not think to take any.  It's free and it's going on for a while.  We spend a lot of time in that park so we will surely stumble upon it again before too long.  From there we went in search of food.  There aren't a lot of places open on Sunday evenings except for pubs so we found ourselves in some Irish pub and had a couple of beers and too much heavy food.  We had these fries, done up like a poutine, with a traditional Newfoundland "Jiggs Dinner" on top of it all.  Salt beef, root veggies, stuffing, gravy, all that bit.  It was delicious but a wee but much.  Went back to the hostel and slept.

We woke up Monday and it was our first day on the "job".  We changed beds and cleaned, sweeping and mopping floors and all that.  It was pretty simple.  We worked a few hours but were able to cut away early.  Which is good because Dave was staying at the hostel, awaiting his flight back to Italy the next day.  So we got to have one last adventure and it was fun fun fun.  We went for a very long walk and found some really nice spots over by this stream and waterfall, over in the rich area of town.  Spent a lot of time walking around the city and ended up at the Duke Of Duckworth for dinner.  This is one of the iconic St. John's pubs, an old English-style pub in an alley that is all stairs.  Fans of "Republic Of Doyle" would recognize it as the bar that the Doyles own, with their offices upstairs.  It looks totally different on the inside than on the show but their fish & chips were the best we've ever had.  There will most certainly be a return trip before we leave town.

From there we went to Bannerman Park and found a nice spot and hung out til way past dark.  It is always great hanging out with Dave and we have a great laugh all the time.  We are definitely going to miss him but we hope to maybe visit him in Scotland sometime in the next two years while he is there.  And surely we'll be able to pick right up where we left off.  Always good times.

Tuesday we had work again and we were cleaning.  Didn't have that much to clean and we knocked it out relatively quickly.  Unfortunately there was a lot of laundry that had to be done off-site and I wound up helping with that while Krissy hung out with Dave.  It wasn't all that bad but they wound up finding some great spots and it was a bummer I couldn't be there with them.  But they had fun and I got to chat with Felix while we were dealing with the laundry so it was quite alright.  Got back and met up with Krissy and Dave and one of the guests, Ben, and hit the pavement once again.  We visited the park and hung out and also went to Smoke's Poutinerie once again.  And once again it was brilliant.  There was a little pictionary going on but we soon had to split so that Dave could catch his cab to the airport.  Got back to the hostel and said our goodbyes and then headed back to the park for a while.  Needless to say we love that park.  It is full of great spots to hang out and relax.

Today we woke up and had some training in the office but then got the rest of the day to ourselves.  Krissy took her hammock to the park to read and chill out and I hung out in bed for a while.  It's been some time since I've been lazy in bed during the day.  It is highly underrated.  Eventually I met up with Krissy and we hung in the park for a bit before heading back to the hostel to get re-situated.

There is a very large provincial museum in the city called The Rooms.  It dominates the skyline and contains pretty much all you'd ever need to know about Newfoundland art, history, and culture.  It is a most impressive place.  And it is free on Wednesdays from 6-9.  It's only about a 15-minute walk from the hostel.  Unfortunately the way there is all uphill (as everything is in St. John's) but it's do-able.  There is a great deal to see at the Rooms and we still have so much to see because you just can't do it all in one go.  There was a large exhibit on the works of Rockwell Kent, an American painter who came to Newfoundland around a hundred years ago and fell in love with it.  As you do.  His paintings were pretty awesome but his drawings were incredible.  No photos because they are not allowed but you should check out his works online.

Here are some photos of St' John's and the harbor, from the Rooms:

One side of the city, with Signal Hill in the center.  We are staying sort of near the top of the left-most batch of buildings.

...and the other side.

There was also an exhibit by a local artist called Pam Hall and she did several interactive installations on themes of social justice.  One of them was building a house out of aprons that she had collected from dozens of Newfoundland women in the workplace and built it as a monument to the working woman.  She also built a house out of maps which was to represent the creation of shared common knowledge.  On the more interactive side, there was a house that was built using these ribbons on which people would write wishes and desires and then tie them to the structure.  I put one on there and Krissy put two.  It is a work in progress and an impressive one at that.  The other cool interactive thing was, via a Facebook group, she had people from all over the world use a template to design a little house of their own, decorated in any way they wanted.  Some had poems on there, some were die-cut, some were painted, anything possible.  Very cool.

Aprons!

This village was the result of her online readers.  The walls are lined with the original envelopes that carried the houses back to her.

But the coolest thing at the Rooms tonight was an installment of the Sound Symposium, which I went over in the last blog entry.  The performance tonight was a classical one but featured world premieres of several modern works by St. John's composers.  It was performed by a small group but the cool thing about it was that the musicians were all separated in the atrium of the Rooms, on different floors even.  So basically the sound just swirled around the open space.  As many modern works are, these are more like soundscapes than the classical music that you might be thinking of.  I very, very much enjoyed it.  I recorded a little of it on my iPhone and shot some video which you can see at the bottom of this post.

You can play "Where's Waldo" and spot the musicians.

Sax player - spotted.

I really wanted to just bust in and wail on these drums and such.  There was another percussionist on the other side and he had a couple of gongs.  Badass.

Anyway, that brings us up to date.  Got back to the hostel and got a little bit more training on the computer procedures.  We'll be working in the office in the morning.  For a little while we will be the only ones here.  Hopefully there will be no shakes.  Seems simple enough.

Before I stop I have to say how much I love walking around this city.  This place has so much character.  It's probably the closest thing the East Coast has to Portland.  It's just a weird, funky place filled with weird, funky houses full of weird, funky people.  A lot of people bitch about the hills and I will admit that I am starting to understand their plight but it's not a drag walking them or anything.  Everything here is slanting one way or another.  The good thing, of course, is that it's only uphill going one way.  So the downhill bits are fun.  Walking back from the Rooms was fun and walking back from the park is fun.  But walking back from Water Street and that area...not so much fun (though some cross streets are worse than others so if you know which one to turn down then you are okay).  Since everything here is walkable we have barely used the car.  Nice to save on gas.  That also means that we've put some serious miles on our feet.  Even though I've been eating stupid food like poutine two times a day I still think I am losing some weight here.  That's a good thing.

Here is a little sampling of our walk home tonight:

We have no idea what this tree is but it is beautiful.

I can't remember which street this is but it's one that we walk down whenever we are walking back from the park.  Again, I love these houses.

Republic Of Doyle fans might recognize this house as the one that is used in the show, where the Doyles live.  This house is about eight doors down from the hostel.  The inside of the house isn't featured in the show but the outside sure is, several times per episode.  Which is why this house is currently on the market for almost $700k.  

Anyway, that's about all I got tonight.  Until next time, here is a little sample of what went on at the Rooms tonight: