Jay and I are very excited that we are going to be leaving on Monday July 27th -bound for St. John’s Newfoundland and the George Street Music festival. We went for the first time last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. For six days each year, they close George street off to traffic and hold the festival. There is a big main stage in the middle of the street where featured bands play until about 11:30 pm. However, the party doesn’t end there. George Street is a fairly short street-about 3 blocks-but it is jammed packed with pubs and bars of all sorts-literally about 45! To aid festival goers in being able to quickly get liquid refreshments, “speed bars” are set up outside all of the pubs. I mean you wouldn’t want to have to walk all the way inside a bar to refresh your cocktail…would you? Once the main stage activities end, bands in most of the bars start playing. The fun goes on until daybreak! One of the really interesting things that Jay and I noticed last year was that it wasn’t just the young folks there as we would have expected. It seemed that everyone in the town turned out, young kids through grandparents. A very cool, community celebration.
We not only loved the festival but fell in love with Newfoundland as well. The people are very friendly, fun and exceedingly kind. We had to be careful not to even pause anywhere near the edge of the sidewalk because traffic would literally stop and wait to see if we wanted to cross the street. What a big difference from a city like DC where traffic would happily run you over rather than pause for one moment. The landscape is gorgeous
and the climate, at least in August, is much more to our liking-even with a bit of wind and rain!
We had a ball last year-went whale watching,
went on a haunted tour of the city,
listened to great bands,
ate awesome pizza in the wee hours of the morning
and really were able to relax.
Who knows what we’ll get up to this year! We will be twittering again, so if you’re interested-please follow our tweets!
[…] After visiting St. John’s, NewFoundland for the George Street Festival in July/August 2008 and 2009, we started thinking about finding a cooler place “to summer.” The highest the […]
[…] in Newfoundland, Canada. We have been a couple of times in the past (see my previous posts: Off to Newfoundland Again, Ant in a Teacup, and Out with the Old) and absolutely love it there. We’ve always gone at […]