A Private Tour of Newfoundland: The Only Way to Go!

Anyone who reads our travel stories knows we are fans of private touring. We’ve hired private tour guides in France, Turkey, Chile, Costa Rica, Ireland, and the list goes on. Why, then, would we do a Newfoundland tour any differently? Exactly!

This summer’s travel took us to the island of Newfoundland on Canada’s east coast. As it happens, Art was born in the province’s capital city, St. John’s, and lived there until he was seventeen, but he had never seen the western part of the island. Patty had been only to the Avalon Peninsula, where St. John’s is located. But we knew there was so much more to see. So, we embarked on some research to figure out who might be doing private touring in the area.

Of course, several companies in Newfoundland do group tours—the dreaded bus tour. That’s okay for someone who likes to travel in groups, but it is not our thing. We finally discovered that McCarthy’s Party, one of the largest tour companies in Newfoundland, would consider developing a customized itinerary, arranging accommodation along the way, transportation and a private guide.

So, after a bit of back and forth on the itinerary, we booked our tour and were off.

We flew from Toronto to Deer Lake in western Newfoundland, where our guide, Carl, met us at the baggage area. See the terrain as our plane descends into Deer Lake.

Then, we boarded our private “truck” (a black 2023 Chevrolet Suburban Premier) and were off to Cornerbrook, where we began our immersion into the Newfoundland culture and terrain.

We knew that five-star accommodation wasn’t in the cards in that part of the world, but the hotels, motels and inns where McCarthy’s put us were the best in the area, and we knew what to expect. That first night, we stayed at the one-hundred-year-old Glynmill Inn.

We were off along the Viking Trail to Gros Morne National Park the next day.

It was a spectacular day for a three-kilometre hike into Western Brook Pond, a landlocked fjord where we spent a few hours on the water admiring the breathtaking scenery. (We wrote about that day in a previous post.)

We spent overnight in the tiny village of Plum Point at the Plum Point Motel (two nights there)…and the next day, we travelled farther north to the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows with a stop in St. Anthony to visit the world-renowned Grenfell mission. (See our private transportation below.)

We spent the next day back in Gros Morne, exploring Bonne Bay and hiked the Tablelands.

After overnight in Rocky Harbour, we were off to the centre of the island to Gander. You might recall Gander as the centrepiece of the Broadway musical “Come From Away” because this is where so many of the 9-11 airliners had to take shelter for a week after the World Trade Center disaster in 2001.

Our next day took us to the stunning Bonavista peninsula, where we visited the spot where John Cabot allegedly landed in 1497 and the charming village of Trinity.

Then there were the puffins. What can we say? Against the spectacular backdrop of dramatic cliffs and pounding ocean waves, we hiked to several spots to observe the magical puffins. These Atlantic seabirds are indigenous to this part of the world, breed in large colonies on these coastal cliffs and are so distinctive with their brightly coloured beaks.

One of the most interesting places where we parked and hiked to see these birds was a village called Elliston, which bills itself as the “root cellar capital of the world.’ And they have good reason to do so! The root cellars, along with the magnificent scenery, make the place so worth the visit.

All along the way, Carl, our guide, led us to fabulous little spots, including tiny restaurants where we sampled staples of Newfoundland cuisine every day at lunch—fish cakes, homemade breads, partridgeberry cake, cod au gratin. We could never have found these by ourselves, which is one of the reasons we love private touring with a guide.

It rained during the final day of our trip. So, Carl arranged appropriate activities. First, we had a private tour of Vernon’s Antique Car Museum (read more about that here), then a tasting and lunch at the Newfoundland Brewing Company.

We finally ended in St. John’s, where we did our own tour of special places in the city. (More about this city visit in the next post.)

One of the extra bonuses of travelling with a private guide is the opportunity to have someone take photos of the two of us together! Such a treat! (Okay, the third one’s a selfie.)

There is no doubt in our minds that private touring is well worth the extra expense. And you can’t put any price on the memories we created on our Newfoundland trip.

A Villa in Mallorca

When two friends email you this message: “How would you like to share a villa with us in Mallorca for a week?” what do you do? If you’re like us, you immediately look up a few particulars about the island of Mallorca and begin frantically figuring out how you can spend at least three weeks in the vicinity. After all, if you’re crossing six time zones, we figure it has to be for more than one week. So, a few months ago, when we received just such an email, we looked online at the villa our friends had discovered in Mallorca via VRBO, we said yes and started planning.

Mallorca is one of Spain’s Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean.

We decided to fly into Madrid and spend two weeks touring parts of Spain and Portugal we’d never visited before. (More to come about that wonderful part of the trip in upcoming blog posts.) From Madrid, it’s an easy hour-and-a-half flight to Palma de Mallorca, the capital of this extraordinary island.

The moment we started planning this trip, we discovered a Netflix series called The Mallorca Files, a British police procedural set in none other than Mallorca. The series had its endearing moments, but the most indispensable character in it was the island itself. After seeing the incredible scenery―beaches, mountain villages, dramatic caves, and the city of Palma―we were hooked. So we brushed up on our Spanish and were off to Mallorca.

The villa was located in a village called Cala Pi. A forty-minute drive from the Palma airport, the village consists of one hotel, a well-known beach, a few restaurants, several small convenience stores and a swath of fancy (and not so fancy) villas. This one fell into the fancy category.

Our companions for the week were arriving from a short trip to the south of England and planned to rent a car when they arrived. We arranged to be picked up at the airport and transported to the villa. Since Cala Pi is not close to anything of note (except the beach, as mentioned earlier), having a car at one’s disposal is essential unless you want to taxi everywhere. We would have been prepared to do that to avoid renting a car, which is not our preference unless we’re in North America. We see so much more when someone else is driving. (And our lovely friends did offer to drive us to various locations on the island throughout the week! 😊)

Whenever you rent something via a website, there’s always a bit of trepidation as you approach your first glimpse. It’s probably a bit like online dating―although we have no personal experience of that. We figure the question at top of mind would be this: will the real thing resemble the online photos? As we approached El Capitano―the villa’s name―we breathed a sigh of relief. From the roadside, it looked nice and was surrounded by other rather nice villas. But walking through to the ocean side of the villa, it became clear that it was more than nice. Its online profile didn’t do it justice. The view! That private pool! It was wonderful.

We settled into what was probably the principal bedroom on the main floor while our villa companions took the whole upstairs―two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Then we had to make some eating plans for the week.

The view from the patio door in our bedroom.

Dining was the one thing we were most concerned about in a week of renting a villa, and one of the reasons we’ve avoided it up to now. When on vacation, we prefer to be served our meals and have the cleaning up done by someone else. After all, we’re on vacation. However, we were open to a new experience.

Together with our friends, we planned to barbeque for three nights. Then they had a recipe they wanted to do one evening, and we planned to eat out the other evenings. There were three or four restaurants in the village of Cala Pi, a fifteen-minute walk from the villa. We tried several of them and they were all just fine. We dined one night at the posh Cap Rocat, where we had the eight-course tasting menu. It was heavenly. Of course, we made breakfast and most lunches at the villa in its extremely well-equipped kitchen and ate all our meals on the covered porch overlooking the tranquil pool.

If there were any “issues” with the villa, here’s what they were. First, why in the world would a vacation villa offer only one tiny icecube tray that makes the tiniest icecubes known to humankind? We had to buy a second icecube tray, and, frankly, they still didn’t cut it.

Then, on the second morning of the trip, the uber-expensive, commercial-grade, barista-friendly coffee maker died. Later that day, the very responsive property manager arrived and opened a locked door that led to a storage space behind the house. He then set up a Delonghi coffee maker―expensive, but not quite as eye-wateringly expensive as the first one. We noted that both coffee machines indicated that they needed to be decalcified. This should be done regularly to avoid coffee hiccups. Anyway, we loved the second coffee maker so much that these discerning travellers promptly bought one when they arrived home.

The third thing was the bedside tables in the principal bedroom. They had shag-carpet-covered tops. They might have looked interesting as part of the décor, but it was impossible to put anything small on them for fear of it being eaten up, never to be seen again in the fur. They also didn’t scream cleanliness to us.

Some photos of the neighbourhood:

Overall, it was a wonderful way to travel. Will we do it again? It’s not a vehement yes, but never say never. We’ll share more about the island itself (wonderful) in our next post.

If you’d enjoy seeing more of the villa’s interior, the property and the views, join us as we walk through it in the video below. Then just close your eyes and pretend you’re there.

Chartering a Plane: What a way to go!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to charter a small plane and fly off to somewhere wonderful with just you (and maybe one other person) and the pilot? Maybe you’ve been a bit like us and had this itch to have this experience at least once. And maybe you’re a bit like Art, who had a desire not only to charter a plane but also to fly into a particular airport. That airport is on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. How, you might ask, did he figure out he wanted to do this?

Anyone who has been following along with us on our discerning travel experience for some years will know that we have taken more than a few cruises. And you’ll also know that we’ve spent a few weeks cruising in the Caribbean, visiting many islands more than once. One island that’s often on cruise itineraries is the lovely St. Lucia, with its lush vegetation and its famous “Deux Pitons,” those iconic volcanic peaks. (We’ll show them to you in our next post when we charter a 42-foot catamaran in St. Lucia.) When you cruise past this island, you see these natural aspects of the island, but if you’re really astute, you’ll also see a runway―a runway at a small airport tucked between the hills.

This runway is at the airport near the capital Castries and is called the George F. L. Charles Airport (SLU). It’s the small airport that caters only to the inter-island carriers. Most international visitors arrive at Hewanorra International Airport (UVF), located on the southeast corner of the island, a good hour and a half drive from most of the nicest resorts. On our recent Caribbean adventure, we wanted to fly into SLU.

We began this holiday in Barbados, so all we needed was a flight from Bridgetown, Barbados, to Castries, St. Lucia, a 45-minute flight on a turbo-prop. But, of course, this trip was two years into the COVID pandemic. That meant that we would have to have negative COVID tests before we could receive a travel authorization for St. Lucia. So, we made a plan.

Art began researching private charters in the Caribbean and came up with a few reasonable possibilities. The fly in the ointment was that we weren’t prepared to pay the (large) fee upfront without knowing if we’d get that travel authorization. So, we made a contingency plan and asked our travel agent to book us a fully refundable ticket on InterCaribbean Airways on one of their 30-seaters so that we would at least have a way to get from Barbados to St. Lucia if our private charter didn’t work out.

One of the airline charter companies (Latitude Air Charters) was still able to provide a plane two days before when we finally received that travel authorization from St. Lucia, so we booked, paid in full, and cancelled our commercial flight. One can quite nicely justify such an extravagance, though, in the world of COVID―just imagine how much safer we would be on a private plane? Anyway, we booked it and were off.

As part of the booking, Art requested that his contact arrange a car to pick us up in Barbados to take us to the airport and another to meet in Castries. It was seamless.

As we neared the airport in Bridgetown, our driver called ahead so that there would be an agent right there to check us into our flight when we arrived two minutes later. It was 10:30 in the morning, and the airport was deserted. We knew that the international flights wouldn’t start arriving until some time after noon, and we would be long gone by then.

We checked in at the Mustique Airways counter and headed to security. Of course, we were the only passengers clearing security, so that wasn’t an issue.

After security, we entered the departure lounge, where we were to wait for the same person who had checked us in to arrive on the tarmac with a vehicle to drive us to our plane. What a feeling to be the only passengers there!

Before we knew it, we were at the plane, and the agent was putting our luggage in the small hold while the pilot did his final inspection. Then we were off.

There’s something special about this kind of personal adventure―something special about checking one very magical experience off our bucket list. As we took in everything―leaving the beaches of one island behind, crossing the Caribbean Sea and watching a new set of beaches edge into view―we knew how lucky we were.

And then, we began to make our approach to that runway. On the approach, it seems as if the plane will land in the ocean, but of course, it didn’t.

And if you want to come along on that flight with us and experience that approach, just click below for the video. You won’t regret it!

Travel Planning: Asia in our sights

It’s mid-April and here in the northern hemisphere the calendar says it’s spring. One look out our windows here in Toronto, however, tells a whole different story. We’ve been in the grips of a late-season ice storm for the past few days and it could not look more like winter out there. What better time to be thinking of Hong Kong and its current 25° C temperatures!

We’ve been actively planning this Asia trip for some time. It all began some time last year when, despite Asia having been on our travel bucket list for some time, we mused that perhaps we didn’t really need that 15-hour flight. When our son got wind of our thoughts on the subject he implored us not to give up the idea. In his view we HAD to visit Hong Kong and Tokyo at least. He had performed in both cities on various tours with Les Ballets de Monte Carlo a few years ago and told us that we’d love both experiences. So, we decided to take his advice and plan a trip that would include both.

ashford castle — It was just the two of us and Kevin, our guide, in his Mercedes when we toured Ireland a few years ago. Here is our transportation parked out front of Ashford Castle.

We looked at land-tour options and those included a number of regional flights in China. We wondered if we really wanted to spend that much time in airports where we didn’t speak the language, and worse, couldn’t even read the language characters. That seemed like a bit of a drag to us, although we considered a Kensington private, guided tour, since we had used them before in Ireland and were more than satisfied. But there were other options. We could consider transportation between cities by ship.

As long-time readers know about us, cruise ships are really just comfortable methods of transportation for us usually. Okay, we sometimes do like an island hop in the Caribbean on a six-star ship, but in recent years, our “cruises” have been selected based on their itineraries. So, we decided to check out our favourite cruise lines to see what they offered in Asia.

We explored Oceania, Regent and Cunard. We even considered Holland America, although we haven’t travelled on them in years. It turns out that the vast majority of the itineraries on offer include one but not both of the must-see cities on our list – Hong Kong and Tokyo – and truth be told, most cruise lines don’t actually seem to go to Tokyo at all. Then we hit on Silversea. (You might remember that we sailed on Silversea’s new ship the Silver Muse in the fall down the western coast of South America – in actual fact, we had booked this Asia cruise even before we left for that one!)

silver shadow — We’ll be sailing aboard the 382-guest luxury cruise ship the Silver Shadow. [Photo credit: https://www.silversea.com/ships/silver-shadow.html]

Silversea was the only one we found that began in Hong Kong and ended in Tokyo. That was perfect: we could spend a few days in Hong Kong before sailing, then end with four or five days in Tokyo. So, we booked. One of the nice features of this itinerary was also that the ship spends two days in each of the important ports of call: Shanghai, Beijing, Osaka. It also offers a couple of mid-cruise land tours where you leave the ship for an overnight on shore so that you can explore places you couldn’t do in a single day. Next on the agenda – right after touching base with our long-time travel agent Angela (Maritime Travel) who booked our non-stop flights to and from our destination – was to plan how we would see the sights.

map

First, we looked at the cruise line’s own offerings. We decided to book their overland trip in Beijing. When the ship docks in Tianjin (the port for Beijing) we’ll be on the fast train into the city for touring. Then we stay overnight at the Four Season’s Hotel in Beijing. The next day we head to The Great Wall then back to meet the ship. Unlike the shore excursions which, on Silversea, you book in advance but pay for when you disembark the ship, this overland trip had to be paid for in advance. Done.

As we looked at the other offerings, it occurred to us that there were choices among them that would permit us to see as much of the stops as possible. So, we booked a number of excursions. Silversea’s shore excursions, in our experience, appear expensive to the untrained eye, but they do have fewer people on buses and are generally good value for the money. That took care of planning for Shanghai, Hiroshima, Osaka and Kyoto. That left us with our book-ends: Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Naturally we looked to Tours-by-Locals, our go-to company for private touring around the world.

Our private guide in Hong Kong has now arranged our transportation from the airport to our hotel on Hong Kong island, will provide us with a private tour of the city and arrange for our transportation to the pier. Our Tokyo guide has arranged three days of city touring and a day of touring outside the city – then will drop us at the airport after four days there. And all of this was arranged through Tours-by-Locals’ web site where we were able to arrange all the details which are personalized for us. Our Tokyo guide has even provided us with materials to help us acclimatize to Japanese culture as well as an extensive list of recommended reading. Well, we opted to prepare for this trip not through too much reading, but via two video-based courses.

We bought two courses from The Great Courses, a site that we’ve gone to throughout the years for a wide variety of educational programming: Foundations of Eastern Civilization (Craig G. Benjamin PhD), which was 48 half-hour lectures and Understanding Japan: A Cultural History (Mark J. Ravina PhD), 24 half-hour lectures. And yes, we watched every one of them.

Both professors are experts in their fields, but more important perhaps even than that is that their passion for their respective specialties is palpable in their terrific delivery. We didn’t take notes, but we feel that having done this in advance, we can more fully experience the history and culture of our Asian destinations. We’re looking forward to seeing in real life many of the places and experiences both shared with us.

Now that we’ve booked and finalized everything, and prepared our brains for new adventures, we’re just about ready to board that plane. We leave in five days. Hope you’ll come along with us!

Getting ready…trusty Briggs & Riley carry-ons.

The Discerning Travelers

A discerning guide to amazing experiences…

Tag: travel planning

A Private Tour of Newfoundland: The Only Way to Go!

A Villa in Mallorca

Chartering a Plane: What a way to go!

Travel Planning: Asia in our sights

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