We left New York at 9am, taking a taxi to La Guardia airport. It was a beautiful sunny morning and, apart from some bad traffic in Manhattan, the journey was uneventful.
The Manhattan skyline from the freeway on the way to the airport.
We took ages to check in for our Air Canada flight to Toronto but, with a short flight time of around ninety minutes, we were soon in Toronto waiting for our connection to St. John's. We had time for a snack lunch before boarding at around 2.45pm. I then discovered that Newfoundland is on its own time zone of three and a half hours behind GMT, so our scheduled landing was at 7.30pm and not 8pm as I had originally thought.
We collected our bags and walked outside the terminal to the taxi rank. We only had a few minutes to wait for a taxi. The driver turned out to be Ukrainian. He had lived in Canada for 15 years and had recently moved from Vancouver to Newfoundland, because the cost of education in Newfoundland is the cheapest in Canada. I would never have guessed I would learn a fact like that from a St. John's cabbie! When we told him we had been to Kiev and the Crimea, he became an instant friend and not only gave us maps of St. John's but also a Ukrainian coin, a one Hryvnia. What a wonderful moment to experience! Here we were thousands of miles away from the Ukraine and I now had a Ukrainian coin in my pocket!
We reached our hotel after a twenty minute drive to the waterfront in St. John's. The Marriott Courtyard has a wonderful view over the inlet where St. John's is located. Within a few minutes of us checking in, Bob & Thelma arrived. They had flown from London via Halifax.
We had a good meal in the hotel before heading for bed. Tomorrow we collect the cars ready to be off on Wednesday.
I'll post photos in the next day or so, as I haven't time to do it now and our next stop is in an out-of-the-way place called Twillingate, where I am sure there will be no broadband.
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