15 Things to Do in St. John’s, Newfoundland with Kids and Teens (and Parents and Grandparents)

travel dates: July, 2023

This is going to be a long one!

“Go east and then keep on going. You’ll eventually find the oldest city in North America,” tweeted the Newfoundland and Labrador tourism account back in 2018. They meant St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador’s capital and its biggest city by far (it’s nine times bigger by population than Corner Brook, its closest competitor).

St. John’s is not, however, the oldest city in North America. It’s not even particularly close : “[Newfoundland historian Jeff] Webb said trying to pin anything down as the “oldest” or the “first” is “a foolish game.” The trouble comes from the meaning of the words. Not everybody means the same thing when they say “city” or “settlement,” he said.”

These days they seem to stick with the less impressive but more defensible claim that St. John’s is “the oldest English-founded city in North America.” And there’s really no reason to exaggerate: St. John’s is plenty full of history, and Newfoundland can claim a pre-Columbus Viking settlement, for goodness sake; there’s really no need to embellish!

We loved St. John’s despite its youth (relative to, say, Mexico City), though! It’s relatively compact and approachable, as far as capital cities go, but there’s no end of things to do there and in the area; we spent a week there and could easily have spent another.

Dave’s parents met up with us in St. John’s for most of the week, and we had our 10-20 year old kids along, so everything on this list is generally multi-generation friendly. Here’s a run-down of what we did:

Signal Hill

Signal Hill overlooks St. John’s Harbour and most of it is maintained by Parks Canada as a historical site. The harbour has just one skinny entrance, appropriately named the Narrows, so Signal Hill, ideally situated for spotting would-be invaders, has a history of fortification dating back to the 17th century. (Incidentally, I just spent way too long contemplating–and discussing with multiple people–whether I should be spelling harbour the American or Canadian way when I’m using it to talk about a Canadian harbour, but as a common noun as opposed to part of a proper name. I had almost settled on “harbor” when I realized the Wikipedia article about Signal Hill puts the “u” in. Harbour it is!)

The visitors’ centre sits partway up the hill, and from there you can either walk or drive to the top. We opted to park at the visitor centre and check out the exhibits and then take the short but steep trail up from there. The visitor centre has a small exhibit area with lots of information about Signal Hill’s changing role over time, and then you can finish with a….multi-media presentation! I love multi-media presentations! The website doesn’t actually call it a multi-media presentation; it calls it a film. But my memory is that it’s a film with multiple screens with characters talking to each other and fun sound effects and whatnot. As it started I leaned over to my kids and whispered, “this is incredible,” but I think they just laughed at me. At any rate, watch the movie!

The visitor centre has a gift shop and a cafe that sells assorted desserts and coffee. You can also pay the $9 per adult (kids free) admission fee here (or show them your Parks Canada pass).

After the visitor centre we took the trail up to Cabot Tower on the top of the hill. The trail is steep but short (500 meters each way); it winds past a battery and barracks from the 19th century and offers up great views of the harbour and downtown. The tower itself was built in 1898-1900 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of John Cabot’s landing in Newfoundland. Inside it today there’s a gift shop on the lower level and exhibits about the tower’s history as a Marconi wireless station. If you’ve spent much time anywhere on the eastern coast of Canada or the northeastern US or, for that matter, in Ireland, you’ve likely come across some sort of Marconi-related site before. Guglielmo Marconi claimed to have received the first transatlantic wireless signal here in 1901, though the claim is disputed for assorted reasons. I’ve seen a lot of Marconi sites in my day, but this one is where I first learned that Marconi succeeded in sending wireless signals not because he was so smart but because he was lucky. He theorized (science-y explanations ahead; details may be hazy or slightly inaccurate! Check my work!) that the signals would follow the curvature of the earth and thus make it across the ocean instead of veering off into space. “You are so dumb, Marconi,” said science people. But then it worked! Only it turns out the reason it worked is because the signals bounced off the ionosphere, which no one, including Marconi, knew existed. So Marconi was completely wrong about how wireless signals travel, but was helped along by an invisible part of the atmosphere. Like magic! And then they gave him a Nobel Prize.

Anyway, after climbing up the tower and learning about Marconi, we were ready for some hiking. The most popular trail at Signal Hill is the North Head Trail, which looks awesome. But it features some sections where you’re on a narrow path along the edge of a cliff that drops straight into the ocean, with chains to hold onto to keep yourself from plunging into the sea. This seemed…iffy for Abe, our youngest and most afraid of heights kid. Someday! (I’m afraid of heights, too, but I think I would have psyched myself up to try it, were it not for Abe).

Instead, we hiked the 1.3 km Ladies Lookout Trail to where it links up with the Burma Road Trail for a return to the Visitors’ Centre. Like every trail in Newfoundland, it featured spectacular views. We even spotted an eagle’s nest complete with baby eagles (so bringing binoculars is recommended).

Johnson Geo Centre

The Johnson Geo Centre is on the way to (or on the way back from) Signal Hill, and we combined visits to both for our first full day in St. John’s. The Geo Centre has a lot of the features of a standard science museum, but with a big emphasis on rocks and geology…and the fun twist that it’s built into the side of a hill such that some of the walls ARE rocks.

So one thing I’ll say is that there are so many rocks here. If you love rocks, this is the place for you! It was actually a few too many rocks for us, but we did our best to learn all the rock stuff. Newfoundland is nicknamed “the rock” after all…

There’s also another multi-media presentation: “Instead of a projection screen, the Geo Theatre features a rock wall complete with running streams, glowing lava, and even rain showers.” Awesome. And then the slightly weird “Oil and Gas Gallery” which features lots of information about oil drilling and is sponsored by Exxon. If you’ve been missing the big oil sponsored Ellen’s Energy Adventure at Epcot, then this is for you! My notes indicate that the message I took away was: “Basically, we’re supposed to go to space because earth is polluted and keep drilling for oil because the economy.”

But maybe the best thing about the Geo Centre is that these guys live right outside!

It’s a Newfoundland and a Labrador! They’re actually looking across the harbour at another set of statues, which we’d see later in the trip.

Botanical Gardens

We visited the Memorial University Botanical Garden largely because it was very close to Pippy Park and because we thought it would be a nice, chill first day activity for Dave’s parents (henceforth known as Nana and Grandpa) after a very long travel day. But it turned out to be an absolutely charming botanical garden, and everyone enjoyed it. There are extensive grounds with a nice trail network, so we started off doing a loop through the woods, where we encountered a fun quiz about Canada (which we did very well on, at least for Americans! Okay, it was pretty easy)

And then we explored the gardens, which were looking lovely in early July (by early July things are pretty sad and tired of the heat in botanical gardens closer to home). Lots of native plants:

Chances to smell flowers:

And accessorize (it was already on the ground; he didn’t pick the flower!):

Assorted whimsy:

Look! It’s Nana and Grandpa! They made it!

My favorite part was the alpine garden, featuring my new favorite flower:

I want to recreate this vignette in my sunroom:

So highly recommend the botanical garden for a morning or, if you want to do all the trails, you could spend most of the day there. It’s definitely one of those “great for all ages” places that I’m always on the lookout for.

The Rooms

It’s pretty remarkable that a city the size of St. John’s has a museum as impressive as The Rooms. It’s the standard history/natural history/art museum that you’ll find in a lot of cities, but it’s just so well-done and engaging. It should be a part of any first time visit to St. John’s (and for us it will be a part of any second visit to St. John’s, too, because we definitely didn’t see it all!) Both the name and the architecture pay homage to the traditional fishing sheds that dot Newfoundland’s shoreline.

We spent the bulk of our time here in the very extensive historical and cultural galleries. Where we learned, among many other things, about the history of Newfoundland’s fishing industry. Like about this quote from fisheries minister and Newfoundland native, John Crosbie, on the eve of the 1992 cod fishing moratorium that threw Newfoundland’s economy into a tailspin from which it has yet to recover:

There are so many artifacts and so much information here that you could easily spend your entire museum day in this part of the museum.

But then you would miss out on the art and natural history galleries:

There’s a lot of hands-on stuff to keep kids busy:

If all the culture makes you hungry, the museum restaurant is very well-regarded (in general and also by Nana and Grandpa, who had lunch there).

Quidi Vidi

Quidi Vidi (pronounced as a rhyming Kiddie Viddie and so named for reasons no one can remember anymore) is a picturesque little neighborhood in St. John’s that’s very much worth a visit. We were here to eat at Quidi Vidi Brewery, continuing our rewarding tour of Newfoundland craft breweries.

Quidi Vidi is a popular spot so there are some challenges to visiting, starting with parking. It’s a maze of narrow streets with tricky parking, but if you’re willing to walk a bit you’ll likely have more luck at one of the larger lots on the edge of the neighborhood.

The brewery itself was also packed; I think this was our first crowded restaurant in Newfoundland, so it was our first introduction to the common Canadian way of handling things when there’s a wait for a table: the host sort of looks around helplessly and tells you there are no tables, but doesn’t take your name or appear to have any sort of system for distributing tables to the multiple waiting people as they become available. Probably Canadians have excellent short term memories and don’t need to write anything down, but it made us a little uneasy with our hungry party of seven and a line snaking down the stairs behind us. Dave looked around himself, spotted an empty table and said, “what about over there?” The host looked over and agreed that this was indeed an available table and told us that, sure, we could sit there. We have since encountered this same sort of system in touristy parts of Ontario as well, so this doesn’t seem to be just a Newfoundland thing.

At any rate, once you get a table at Quidi Vidi Brewery, you can enjoy good food and beer, slow service, and live music some nights (you’ll find that there is, apparently, a rule that every musical act in Newfoundland must play The Tragically Hip’s “Wheat Kings” at some point during a set. This is fine. It’s a great song!)

This is the last known appearance of that red rain jacket on the back of Abe’s chair. We’re pretty sure he lost it here, but we didn’t notice for a couple of days. Losing one’s rain jacket in Newfoundland is not a great idea, but he survived.

Bowring Park

Who doesn’t love a beautiful, sprawling urban park?! Especially one filled with whimsical sculptures! We went here for a picnic lunch and to just wander around on our last full day in St. John’s and found it completely charming. Particularly the Peter Pan statue, twin to the one in Kensington Gardens in London (but this one has a tragic backstory about a child lost at sea).

The park has lots of amenities like a swimming pool, tennis court, sports fields, a playground…but we were mostly in it for the sculptures (also, you can see again how lovely the height of summer is for flowers in Newfoundland):

Downtown

The downtown area is great for wandering, shopping, eating…while we were there they had a big section of Water St closed to vehicles, turning it into a big pedestrian mall for the summer season. We spent a good bit of time just walking around downtown and poking our heads into shops (Abe was on the hunt for a Newfoundland dog t-shirt very specifically, and we eventually located one). I’m noting here that Abe still has the red jacket, a couple of days after Quidi Vidi. So I’m going to guess the way he’s just kind of holding it here instead of wearing it or tying it around his waist did not end well:

We walked along the harbour looking at boats our first night:

And returned to the harbour another evening to see..the other Newfoundland and Labrador dogs!

Look! It’s the Cabot Tower way up there across the harbour!

Plenty of restaurants and bars downtown, including many with live (often Irish) music. We ate one night at Yellowbelly Brewery, in a fun, sprawling old building that survived the 1892 fire downtown. Another night we checked out the Duke of Duckworth, where people will often send you when you ask where to get great fish ‘n’ chips. I didn’t have the fish ‘n’ chips myself, but I did taste Milo’s, so I can confirm that they are excellent. Note that Duke of Duckworth is a…cozy establishment and was perhaps not the ideal choice for our party of 7. They didn’t seem thrilled to see us coming, at any rate, which is a little jarring in Newfoundland where people are generally always thrilled to see you coming.

Note: St. John’s is hilly. Driving can be something of an adventure.

Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Baptist

St. John the Baptist gets two cathedrals in this city that bears his name: a Catholic one and an Anglican one. The Catholic one seems to be the most popular with tourists, but Milo said he wanted to see the most gothic one, so Anglican it was! Incidentally, Newfoundland and Labrador overall are just over 30% Catholic and just over 20% Anglican, but I gather that St. John’s itself is more heavily Catholic, owing, I imagine, to a strong history of Irish immigration.

I’m sure the Catholic cathedral is very nice, too, but we definitely enjoyed all the gothic-ness at the Anglican one:

The Cathedral is open for tours (free/donation) during the summer months or by appointment other times of year. We opted for self-guided, but a volunteer offered to show us around (Dave was sad that I turned this down; sorry, Dave–I panicked! I wasn’t expecting to have to make a decision!)

It’s fairly small and you should be able to see most everything in less than an hour. Don’t miss the interesting exhibit about the history of the building (to sum up: it was completed in 1885 but then largely destroyed in the fire of 1892…and built back exactly the same by 1905).

Newman Wine Vaults

Sticking with downtown for the moment…the Newman Wine Vaults is another quick stop and one of three provincial historic sites we visited in the city. (Fun fact: we encountered Lisa, the same historian/tour guide, at each of the three stops, because that’s how Newfoundland is, even in the big city. And Lisa is a great tour guide). The story is that the Newman family sort of accidentally discovered that their port wine, produced in Portugal, got better when it aged in these stone tunnels in Newfoundland’s cold climate. Your tour guide will give you the more thorough story as you check out the site and will let you try a sample of the wine. It’s a quick stop that you can easily fit in to a longer day exploring the harbourfront area. It’s also surprisingly engaging for kids, given that they can’t try the wine; wandering through the vaults is a cool experience, and there’s also a fairly tricky scavenger hunt available.

Colonial Building

Government business was conducted in the Colonial Building from 1850 until 1959, so largely before Newfoundland became a part of Canada (in 1949). This was our first provincial historic site in St. John’s and our first tour with Lisa (see above). The tour focused a lot on the architecture of the recently renovated building, but there were plenty of forays into history as well. Like we learned all about a riot in 1932, wherein a woman living in the building had her piano smashed. Lisa suggested that Newfoundlanders couldn’t really judge the US for January 6 because of this. Well. I guess. But that was nearly 100 years ago. Anyway!

There were a lot of very Canadian apologies for calling the building the Colonial Building even though thinking about colonialism makes people sad. To make up for it, there’s a somewhat incongruous gallery of indigenous art at the end of the tour.

We weren’t expecting a ton here (it was one of our few rainy days, so we were mostly thinking of it as a good inside activity), but it was surprisingly interesting, even for a bunch of Americans.

The Commissariat

I kind of expected the Commissariat to be my favorite of the three Provincial historical sites we visited in St. John’s, because it’s supposed to be all full of living history, which is my favorite. But…it was not my favorite. This was largely because of our non-Lisa tour guide, who seemed to be a high school-aged kid who was giving perhaps his first tour ever (it was very early in their season). He didn’t really know a lot about the property or have much to say, which made for an awkward tour (we were the only people there). Maybe he got better by August! Anyway, the Commissariat was the home of the Assistant Commissary General for the British in Newfoundland in the 19th century, and, come to think of it, perhaps our poor tour guide didn’t have the most fascinating history to work with…

There’s also an exhibit about the shift from British government to self-rule in the 1830s to check out:

Railway Coastal Museum

The Railway Coastal Museum, housed in the old railway terminus building, tells the story of Newfoundland’s (now defunct) railway and coastal water transportation…in a lot of detail. It’s one of those old school museums with artifacts interspersed with great walls of text…but if you don’t get hung up on trying to read every word, there’s a lot of fascinating information about the ultimately doomed efforts to build and maintain a railway in Newfoundland. There’s also a cool model train in one room that they can only run occasionally because it’s so old (like occasionally as in a few times a day, not once a year or something). And the area in the back has real train cars to look in, set up with mannequins doing…train stuff…so that was my favorite part. That and the parts about the Marine Atlantic ferries, since that’s how we got to Newfoundland ourselves. All in all, another good rainy day stop!

St. John’s Farmers’ Market

The St. John’s Farmers’ Market is a bit of an unorthodox tourist choice maybe, but that was part of the point. We went here before our picnic lunch in Bowring Park to pick up some food that wasn’t cod from the extensive selection of food booths (Nigerian food! fancy grilled cheese! Syrian! waffles! Indian! Taiwanese!) and to check out all the venders selling local goods. It’s a fun place to be, but don’t expect to find a whole lot of…farmers here at the farmer’s market. There are some, but the growing season is short and the soil is rocky in Newfoundland. Of course, we were also there fairly early in the summer; I would guess the vegetable side of thing gets going more later on (and the market is open year round on Saturdays).

As a bonus, while some of us were outside waiting for the others to finish up shopping, we happened to sit down next to a local woman who was captivating some other out of towner’s with tales from neighborhood. She pointed out Alan Doyle, formerly of Newfoundland band Great Big Sea, hanging out across the parking lot and then added in a mock whisper, “I know where he lives. I deliver his mail.”

Cape Spear

Cape Spear Lighthouse is only about a 20 minute drive from St. John’s, but it’s at the end of a hilly, winding road that makes it feel farther away. Cape Spear is famous for being “the easternmost point in North America” (not counting Greenland),  so of course we had to make the drive and check it out. After visiting, I think I can safely say that it’s also the foggiest point in North America.

I’ve seen pictures of it with a beautiful, clear blue sky, but when we were there they told us that it usually looks just like this.

We got there at around 10:15, and the parking lot was already pretty full (and was completely full a few minutes later, though there is some room to park along the road), so getting there early is a good idea. We were planning to take Abe to the 10:30 flag signaling workshop, so we climbed up the very big hill quickly as soon as we arrived so we’d make it on time. The workshop is described thusly on the website: “Hoist away! Learn the ropes of flag signaling during the 1900s at Cape Spear Lighthouse.”

Yay–sounds fun! Abe will love that! We made it by 10:30 to the flagpole, and there was no one in sight (or near the flagpole; the line of sight didn’t go very far because of all the fog). We waited a few minutes, then Dave went into the lighthouse to ask about it. We were told whoever was running the workshop was running late but would be there soon. Great! We waited some more. Finally, after a full half hour, a guy showed up, hoisted one flag up the pole with zero ceremony or explanation, and then left. I don’t think he knew he was doing a workshop. Oh well.

While we were waiting for the fun flag signaling, Nana and Grandpa and Milo and August all went on a guided tour of the site. We met up with them after, and I think they were less than halfway through the tour at that point. It was the opposite of the flag signaling workshop in that it was very thorough. And probably not exactly riveting for youngsters.

We did a self-guided tour, complete with a scavenger hunt, of the historic lighthouse. Then we got out of the cold fog for a little while to have a snack at the little cafe. And then it was time to check out some WWII-era tunnels and stuff on our way to the most easterly point in North America. There are chairs to sit in there so you can rest after your long trek east:

Petty Harbour Mini Aquarium

They’re not kidding when they call the Petty Harbour Aquarium “mini.” It’s pretty much one big room, stuffed full of tanks. But it was a big hit with everyone in our group anyway. We stopped here after Cape Spear; both places are south of St. John’s, but they’re not particularly close to each other, since you have to backtrack on that long, winding Cape Spear road. And parking is something of an issue in this tiny little harbour village, but we managed to find a spot with the big old van along the side of a road.

They pack a lot of cool stuff into the small space here. We had a good time wandering around looking at everything. And then spent a long time at the touch tank, where there was a really knowledgeable staff member who could tell us all sorts of information about everything in there.

August, our vegetarian, really liked that all the animals in here are returned to the ocean at the end of the season, so he picked out a t-shirt:

After the aquarium we spent some time admiring the foggy views before heading back to St. John’s:

And that finally wraps up our time in St. John’s! As you can see, there’s a ton of stuff to do there (and there was plenty we didn’t get to; in particular I would have loved to add in a couple of day trips to places an hour or two away…but we opted not to because we knew we’d be doing lots of driving at our next stop on the Bonavista Peninsula. Which is up next!)

2023 Newfoundland Trip Posts

Visiting Newfoundland: Overview and General Thoughts

Taking the Ferry

Grand Codroy RV Park and Codroy Valley

Water’s Edge RV Park in Gros Morne

Gros Morne National Park: South

Port Au Choix and the Great Northern Peninsula

Gros Morne National Park: North

Gros Morne/Norris Point KOA

Sanger Memorial RV Park/Grand Falls-Windsor

Fogo Island/Brimstone Head RV Park

Twillingate and Dildo Run Provincial Park

Pippy Park, St. John’s Campground Review

15 Things to do in St. John’s

Puffin Viewing in Elliston

Four Days on the Bonavista Peninsula

Terra Nova National Park

Corner Brook

 

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