Honeymooner's guide to Newfoundland and Labrador Emily Olsen finds the most magical hotels and hotspots in one of the worlds most wild corners
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Long after your visit, you’ll continue to dream of Newfoundland and Labrador. The magic of Canada’s most easterly province will stay with you – senses forever ignited with tangled memories of some of the world’s most extraordinary landscapes: jagged fjords, thick verdant forests, dramatic mountains and icebergs. This is no ordinary honeymoon, and that thought might strike you as soon as you touch down in St. John’s. You might wonder how it took only five hours to reach somewhere that feels otherworldly: a parallel universe where skies are bigger, locals are friendlier, stars are brighter, and the air so much fresher. This might even feel daunting - because you know you’re both about to start an adventure that will stay with you forever. So, you decided to swap pina coladas and a sun lounger for hiking boots and a GPS. Did you hesitate at that decision? Maybe. Did your in-laws raise their eyebrows when you said you were off on an adventure honeymoon? Perhaps. But now you’re here and you simply can’t believe your eyes. Because Newfoundland and Labrador is nothing short of magical – waking up each day feels as if you’re on the precipice of discovering something new, because surely no one else has seen the view you’re seeing – the way the silver skies have broken to let long strands of amber light cast shadows and golden puddles over slate-grey oceans. You might walk a well-trodden path through a National Park, but it seems too farfetched that someone else has breathed in the scent of damp soil muddled with black spruce and balsam fir as you just have. You have the feeling you’re being watched – perhaps by an overly cautious moose with her calf hiding amongst emerald mosses and curly ferns. Have they even seen a human before? You saw a pod of Humpbacks – their gleaming backs arched and jewelled in barnacles and hear how their flukes slip elegantly and almost silently into the water,
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rather than the loud, chaotic splashing you’d predicted. Perhaps you sit at breakfast dipping a teaspoon into a sticky pot of cloudberry jam – it’s delicious and you immediately need to tell people back home what you’ve just discovered. But what even is a cloudberry? Organising a hire-car, plotting out the best road trip route and packing a suitcase layered with waterproofs and fleeces might threaten to take some of the magic away. But these are the necessities, and the technicalities of the real world are soon forgotten once you land. Even when you fall victim to ‘four seasons in one day’ or discover you’ve been holding your map upside down an hour into your road trip, every wrong turn and each raincloud just become accidental yet charming additions to a patchwork of wild and windswept coasts, dewy forests, crackling fires and tumblers of local whiskey. Every soaked jumper, forgotten umbrella and mistaken detour are somehow enchanting, lending themselves to new discoveries and tales of adventure, both clumsy and captivating. Memories of pastel fishing towns, wildflower meadows, snow-dusted mountains and fierce ocean swells will stay with you for years to come, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll both return to Newfoundland and Labrador, to discover fresh routes, forest trails and newly opened guesthouses. Once more you can smell the maple trees and the evergreens, watch as otters slip in and out of glossy fjords, and scour farmer’s markets for peculiar jellies and jams. Perhaps you’ll have a folded map and a punnet of blueberries balancing on your lap, muddy hiking boots in the back, window open so you can almost taste the sea. You’re ready for the rain, you don’t mind if you get lost and you’re always happy to take the scenic route. You both share a smile as the engine starts because, once again, even years later, a new adventure begins.