Sun! Cold and windy but SUN! We are happy campers! Until the captain tells us we will be one hour late docking because of the tide – St. John has one of the biggest tidal changes in the world – something like 15 meters – and we are docking at the furthest dock from the city which obviously doesn’t have as deep a draft. Two other ships have the good berths. Ok, well, we’ll figure it out – we may have to give up on going everywhere we had planned, but whatever. This was all well and good until we tried to dock! Oy!
Another Adelaide! They couldn’t get the gangways attached. Brutal! We were – as usual – first in line for getting off the ship. And we had, as usual, sweet Henry (cruise staff) there organizing us. We wouldn’t have his job for all the money in the world. He and Ed have bonded though with Henry calling Ed his bodyguard! Works for us.
So, after another hour of standing in line with Henry, talking to the folks from New Jersey in line behind us, peeking outside to see what is going on, and telling Henry our strategy of always following the Japanese (because they somehow always know where to be for important things) or the photographers, because they are always first off – we finally wish him well and run off the gangway.
Fortunately, we had called Avis earlier when we knew we’d be late. They said they would hold the car for us, and we could only hope they’d hold it for 2 hours! It’s a 15 minute trot to downtown, but Avis is right there – and true to their word – they had our car. They were also fending off a bunch of folks without reservations (one of which asked if they could join us – sorry!). Ed signed the papers and off we went.
I had been chatting up one of the Avis guys who told us if we missed the reversing waterfalls, we wouldn’t really have missed much. So that made our decision easier – we stuck out to the Fundy coast and the parkway. Good call!
Gorgeous drive, gorgeous scenery. We were late enough that we 
went straight to the caves to have lunch at the “renowned” Caves restaurant whose chowder is “world famous” – at least according to them. It’s a real tourist trap, since it’s right in front of the sea caves on the coast. But the food is surprisingly good – huge chowder with lots of lobster and 3 big pieces of fish we shared and were stuffed.
It was crazy packed there so we just headed out to the Fundy Scenic Parkway which was a good call since we barely ever saw another car. Just 11KM of fabulous coastline scenery and peaceful isolation. Gorgeous. We drove out to the very end of the drive, then headed back so we could stop at all the overlooks and do a bit of hiking.
Towards the middle of the drive, we stopped at the little welcome center – thankfully open so we could use the the facilities - then stopped at the Chutes Falls lookout. Here we hiked down to the falls, down this incredibly ladder-like staircase (yikes!)
to the beautiful falls, where we were the only people there (well, we’ve been just about the only people anywhere here, really!).
We even got to see a Flower Pot rock! How cool – it was high tide and amazing – 
but we did take picture of the placard that showed it at low tide. 
Back toward town, we stop at the covered bridge, now devoid of tourists. Ah, it’s lovely being late into port and late out on the road…..we have it all virtually to ourselves! We take some great photos…
…then head back into St. John proper.
We drop the car, and explore the town a little bit – stopping for a fun photos on one of the “whimsical” benches here in town.
Then we head up to the farmer’s market (what a surprise! I know you all are shocked!) – before they close. It’s a great market, cute, clean and with the local delicacy – Dulse – a local seaweed that is harvested for cooking (but we’re not quite sure cooking with what – it smells like tea – very strong tea leaves – not very appealing raw).
Back out into the dusk we wander through the cute little town – would love to have more time to spend here – and back aboard the ship in plenty of time before sail away.
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