Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Aug. 30th, 2024, Day 3 East Coast - Saint John


Lots of pictures still to be added.

Our breakfast served in the Econo Motel in Saint John was simple and did offer cream cheese. My toasts and bagels tasted much better! The weather today was gorgeous. Blue sky and sun! We drove again into uptown Saint John and parked again in the Peel parking lot. Today we walked all in all about 13km plus (several repetitive forward-backward walks are not in the Google maps).

We started again with the market hall. This morning the hall was full of people from the huge Princess Emerald cruise ship that docked in town sometime during the night. We bought 2 loaves of bread (which tasted very good when we ate the loaves a few days later) and Margaret ran back to store them in the car. In the meantime I waited in the local King's Square garden close to an iron contraption that was likely a music shell with the band playing in The upper floor. The thing was dedicated to Edward VII, "King-Emperor". I did not know, that the British monarchs carried the title "King-Emperor" in Canada. I am learning. This park was also full of visitor from the cruise ship.

Afterwards we headed to the nearby Catapult coffee place. We esteemed daughter was not revved up sufficiently by the coffee served in the Econo motel ... The barista lady produced nice leaves both of our beverages.

Then we walked down to the 506 area, a container village which happened to be conveniently placed right beside the berth of the cruise ship. Container villages were a new thing for me, but according to Margaret they are a "thing" in Toronto and NYC. We did not buy anything. We continued to walk along the harbor-front all the way to tin can beach (close to I think a garrison). From there we took in the vista of the harbor. Tin can beach is not a must see, but once there, it is not a bad view. Then we walked all the way back to City Hall via Queens Square and Prince Williams Street (which  parallels the harbor front one or two streets up). We also took a quick detour to the 3-Sisters harbor lamp. The city hall had as part of its front-building design the real piece from the artist (Claude Roussel, who I liked in the Beaverbrook gallery, where the model for the city hall design was shown. Afterwards we walked across the street to local city library which is located in a new fashionable building. It turned out that the Thai restaurant that Margaret had in mind for lunch was also located in the same building in the ground floor. Our meals in the Lemongrass restaurant was very good. We sat outside on a roofed terrace and enjoyed our meals. For Zandra: The lunch prices did not cause us a sticker shock, but their dinner prices were a decent amount higher compared to what I am used to from Toronto or Ottawa.

Afterwards we walked along the harbor front in the direction of Reverse Falls. The harbor basin was approaching low tide in the next 2 hours or so. The walk along this harbor front is partially nice, partially neighboring huge empty storing spaces (or parking lots?), a newly build "French" style fort which we did not walking into (there was an entrance fee), and a few steel related companies. Finally we made it to the Reverse Fall bridge. We did not get close to the falls. Just had a look at the fall from about 300m away. The fall is located beside the Irvine paper and tissue mill. At this time, at low tide, it had a huge, long and smooth V-flow. Maybe some brave souls could run a canoe down :-) Afterward, it was a the same long way back to the city hall. From there we walked a few more streets (Garman street). And then we headed back to the market hall to pick up dinner. We bought take-out meals from the Kim's Korean located in the market hall. Afterwards we returned back to the car.

On our way out of town towards Sussex, we stopped at the local Costco, Canadian Tire, and Walmart to stock up on a few more food items for the next few days. The big-box shops were all bunched up in the same area (there is obviously no space in uptown Saint John for them). The Costco looked like a "fort" when approached. It is located about 30 to 50m above a valley on a flat table-top. On the approach from below one only sees the "grey walls" with a Costco writing on the wall and it looks very ominous.

On our way back from the shopping malls to the highway someone nearly crashed me at a T-junction. My traffic light switched to green, and I thought, hmmh, I am a bit slow to get moving. But I did look to my left, and immediately switched back into brake mode. A lady simply crashed at full redlight  through the T-junction. The person behind me must have also been alert, because nobody bunched into us from behind. Margaret said that the lady that drove through at red light had a cell phone on her ear ... All I did, was moving my foot back on the brake again after just releasing it.

The 40 minute drive to the Pinecone motel in Sussex was uneventful. These new 4 lane highways are all relatively boring. Closer to midnight we drove back 40 minutes to Saint John airport to pick up Gongyu and Daniella. The "International" Saint John airport appears to be relatively small. 2 flights per day to Toronto and 1 flight to Montreal. The remainder are local flights with small machines.

All in all I like Saint John. We only saw a fraction of the old uptown. While some places/houses are ramshackle, others look super trendy and upscale. It is an interesting mix. And the same applies to the businesses there.


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