A week in Newfoundland - part 1 - trip planning and arrival
I first noticed Newfoundland on a map a couple years ago when I was looking for places with fjords. Tracing the craggy coastline on the map, I thought, "I bet Newfoundland has fjords." This spring, while planning our summer vacation, we were looking for a place to spend about a week, before heading to upstate NY for a week with my family. And after looking around at some different options, we settled on Newfoundland.
The province is bigger than you might think and there's really only one main road, the TransCanada, connecting the west to the east side and so we had to pick and choose a bit to balance sites with driving distances. There is not a ton of information out there, it is a bit off the beaten path. My go-to guide, the Lonely Planet has a small chapter in the Canada Guide and the Moon Handbook has a small 100 page guide. However, the official tourism website for Newfoundland and Labrador was fabulous and very helpful with suggestions for itineraries, sites, activities, dining, and lodging.
And so the last week of July, we headed out. Newfoundland is not easy to get to from the west coast, it involved flying from Portland to DFW to Toronto and finally, St. John's arriving after midnight local time. The first two legs were on American Airlines and the final leg was on WestJet, which I had never flown before, but had a good experience with, at least on this trip.
Landing right about midnight, I had expected that the rental car desk would be closed, so I arranged to stay in an airport hotel with an 24 hour airport shuttle and then pick-up the rental car in the morning. However, I noticed, while we were waiting for our bags, that most of the rental car desks were still open, so we were lucky enough to be able to pick-up our car and not have to deal with the hotel airport shuttle and going back and forth to the airport.
From multiple sources, I read that the rental car options are limited and it is very important to check rental car availability and book early. A car is pretty necessary to see a lot of the island, if you want to head beyond the Avalon Peninsula. When we picked up our car, the agent mentioned that she didn't have a lot of them available. But we were given a brand new Ford Fusion, probably one of the fanciest rental cars we've ever used, complete with GPS.
Finally, we headed to our hotel for the night, Comfort Inn Airport Hotel. The hotel was fine for a night, it was pretty convenient, reasonably comfortable, except for a noisy air conditioner, and the included continental breakfast was okay, but nothing special.
