St Johns Travel Guide
For details of what to do and see in St Johns check out our St Johns guide to car hire in St Johns
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St John's, or St John's Harbour to give the city its full name is the oldest continually inhabited city in North America, having been founded in 1528, and prides itself on providing a warm welcome to visitors to the continent, which it has been doing almost for as long as people have wanted to travel there.
For a city so bound up in its history, St John's, the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador province is a strikingly modern place, with few buildings dating back to the city's origins, and a lively nightlife where plenty of alcohol is consumed in the bars and nightclubs along George Street. This is particularly true in the icy winter months, when a few glasses of strong rum are essential in order to keep out the cold.
St John's has a great reputation for being one of the artistic capitals of Canada, and amongst the many attractions on offer, The city boasts several galleries that display many locally produced works of art, including a large number of achingly beautiful winter seascapes, when the icebergs dot the sea, and the conditions in Newfoundland resemble those in the arctic.
The long history of Newfoundland and St John's in particular is explored in the many museums that can be visited in the city, including the especially interesting museum at the Fort Armherst Lighthouse, which was used by the British during the war of independence with the USA.
For all its many attractions, and even in spite of the number of tourists who visit the city every year, St John's retains much of its individual charm, and is a place whose identity has been shaped mostly by the hardship of life on the edge of habitability, and retains its authenticity as a working city, rather than transforming into a theme park parody of itself.
In recent years, an entirely new tourism industry has caused the number of visitors to St John's Harbour to swell exponentially. So-called literary tourists have been drawn to Newfoundland's capital from all over the world in order to sample the simplicity and peace described in E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize Winning novel, "The Shipping News", which was set on the island, and has since been made into a film starring Kevin Spacey and Judi Dench.
A number of local tour companies will arrange for you to see all the sights featured in the book, including the village and house that inspired the story.
