For centuries, life in ST JOHN'S has focused on the harbour. In its heyday it was crammed with ships from a score of nations, but today - although its population is about 105,000 - it's a shadow of its former self, with just the odd oil tanker or trawler creeping through the 200-metre-wide channel of The Narrows into the jaw-shaped inlet. Once a rumbustious port, it's become a far more subdued place, the rough houses of the waterfront mostly replaced by shops and offices, its economy dominated by white-collar workers who are concentrated in a string of downtown skyscrapers and in the Confederation Building, the huge government complex on the western outskirts.

Yet although the city's centre of gravity has begun to move west, the waterfront remains the social centre, home of lively bars that feature the pick of Newfoundland folk music - the best single reason for visiting. Almost all of the older buildings were destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century or demolished in the twentieth, so although St John's looks splendid from the water, with tier upon tier of pastel-painted houses rising from the harbour, there are not a lot of major sights, with the notable exception of the grand basilica , and the Newfoundland Museum , which provides an excellent introduction to the history of the island and its people. Elsewhere, Signal Hill National Historic Site , overlooking The Narrows, has great views back over the city and out across the Atlantic, while the drive out to the rugged shoreline of Cape Spear , the continent's most easterly point, makes for a pleasant excursion, as does the trip to the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve .