Saturday, July 13, 2013

St. John's, Part III

On the Monday of our trip to Newfoundland, it was a little rainy and chilly at first. Our plan was to meet my friend D and her lil dear R for a picnic, so that didn't work out, but we met them anyway, inside the school where 3 year old R was participating in violin camp.  You should have seen the cuteness, we could barely deal.

We had a lovely lunch with the world's cutest three year old, R, and D and then went strolling around downtown in the rain.  We had coffee at Fixed, where I spotted Romesh Thavanathan, the cellist from Hey Rosetta!, which, I am not ashamed to admit, made me all starstruck and giddy for an hour after. We did a little shopping in the multitude of great little boutiques and shops, and found a few treasures to take home.

I found this pretty patterned scarf at Posie Row on Duckworth.
 

We spotted this charming gent at a shop that I think is called Junk, on Water.  I can't seem to find a website for it and I am a receipt tosser, so I am not 100% sure.  But look at HIM!


He's full o' beans.


We went into a great shop, also on Water, called Johnny Ruth, and after we'd been browsing for  few minutes, BF came up to me with this:


In case you couldn't tell, that's Hey Rosetta!'s Tim Baker in pillow form.  Haha!!  As it turns out, it's part of a series called Boy Pillows, a fundraiser for a local theatre company, and proceeds from the sale of the pillows (there are others too, like Mark Bragg and Sherman Downey!) goes to the production of two plays.  Gotta support a cause! ;)

We stopped in at the Duke on Duckworth, apparently a legendary watering hole, for a pint before we headed back up the hill to get ready for supper.  It was pretty cool.  To get there, you go off Duckworth, into a kind of alley, down some stairs and through a big, ancient looking wooden door. Inside is lots of old, dark wood, stained glass lamps, dart boards, and groups of old friends sitting around laughing over afternoon beers.  Apparently bits of the CBC show Republic of Doyle is filmed here occasionally.

After a quick freshening-up back at our St. John's home, we headed back down the hill.  We had a bit of time to kill, so we wandered into yet another gorgeous shop called Home on Water St.  It was one of those shops where the entire time we were there, we were like, "come see this!" and "holy, look what I found."  We ended up coming away with these awesome cook books, two of which we've used already.


The only reason we didn't clean the place out was because we had to fly home and couldn't afford the extra luggage!

For supper, we met an old friend of BF's and her husband at the Gypsy Tea Room.  They have a really interesting menu, and we narrowed it down to tenderloin - pork for BF, beef for me.


The pork came with a roasted sweet potato, parsnip and squash ragout and a sherry and shallot reduction.  Delicious.

My beef came with fingerling potatoes, shiitake mushrooms, green onions and asparagus, and a green peppercorn reduction.  Oh, and scrunchions, of course.

Though I have to admit, the scrunchions were a bit much for me, the tenderloin itself was perfect.  And I am a big snob when it comes to my tenderloin!  Overall, a great supper.

We headed back to O'Reilly's (I suspect if we moved to St. John's we'd be there every night of the week) for some more music.  This time we saw Fergus O'Byrne, another founding member of another legendary (I feel like I've been using that word a lot in these posts) Newfoundland folk group, Ryan's Fancy.


He played a great set, full of songs I remember my folks listening to when I was a kid, and I found myself singing along to many of them.  For his last song, he invited a local star up to join him.  Apparently this guy is in his eighties, and frequently appears at O'Reilly's to do a little dancing.  He even had a sweatband on, in case things got too wild.  Here he is in the middle of his jig.



After he finished up, Con O'Brien came back with a friend and did some songs.



They capped the night off with a beautiful version of Fisherman's Blues by the Waterboy's, which I'm gonna share here with you.  It's not the best quality since I just recorded it with my little camera, but it's so lovely you will like it anyway I think!



Another awesome day.  We love this town!

Till next time!

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