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Karen Moores is a cities-focused travel writer who calls St. John’s, Newfoundland home. She is proud of her city’s commitment to historic preservation while retaining a hip, modern vibe. Check out her insider tips to the Canadian city.

We took a short trip with friends to Newfoundland this week and had the sort of memorable time that everyone talks about whenever they return to Moncton from a visit to St. John's, a city like no other in Canada.

I recently returned from a visit to St. John's, Newfoundland, North America's oldest and most easterly city. St. John's is known to be saturated with Irish traditional and Celtic rock music, but for a smallish city on a fairly remote island, I was surprised by its many other live music offerings.

Last week I went to catch the final performance of Hamlet – one of the 2011 Shakespeare By The Sea productions. I realize writing about this festival when it’s already happened and you can’t now go and see the shows (if you unfortunately missed them) is a bit of a tease, but I’m hoping this post will encourage anyone out there who’s already thinking about a 2012 trip to Newfoundland and Labrador, to plan on seeing a performance or two next year.

Our last visit to Twillingate and Fogo Island was in the fall of 2010 and we wanted to return to find out about the hiking trail development in Twillingate and to walk some of the many trails of Fogo Island that we had heard about. So at midday on Tuesday August 23 we headed out from Corner Brook to central Newfoundland. We also had some friends from Ontario in tow and they were very keen to revisit this area having seen it over 10 years ago on a driving tour of the province.

“Ed and Ed’s B and B — Where you are a Stranger but Once” is the third play in this series. Since we hadn’t seen any of the previous “Ed and Ed” plays we were not certain what to expect, other than that the programme billed it as a comedy. Many of the plays at Theatre Newfoundland Labrador’s Gros Morne Theatre Festival deal with local themes, so this play fits right in since the Bed and Breakfast that Ed and Ed are opening is  in Cow Head.

At 7:30 am on Sunday August 13, 2011, I peered out the window at the Hotel North in St. Anthony and the fog was so thick I couldn’t see across the parking lot. “I guess our 9:00 am boat trip is going to be scrubbed,” I told my wife Heather. But a few minutes later she pulled back the curtains and said she could see across the harbour.

Well, it can’t be denied. The Folk Festival this year was a damp one. But it also can’t be denied that the performances were as amazing, and surprising as ever – and the vibe of the audience was gun ho and game for anything.

We were finishing our pea soup and dumplings when we could hear some accordion and guitar music coming from the “kitchen” of The Outport Museum and Tea Room in La Scie. The cook and waitress, Valerie Whalen said they were going to play some music in the “kitchen” of the museum and would we like to join them. “Sounds perfect to us” we chimed in, so we joined a handful of other visitors for an impromptu kitchen party.

St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, is in its annual prime. The city is on creative wheels. There are so many events, festivals and theatrics going on it’s quite a panic trying to figure out what things you can possibly bear to miss in order to see the things you absolutely can’t.

When I recently mentioned to Gaylene Buckle that we were heading to Cow Head to see some plays for the weekend, she suggested we try out the hiking trail that traverses the “Head”. As Theatre Newfoundland Labrador’s (TNL) general manager, she has spent many days in Cow Head and knows the area’s nooks and crannies.

Some plays suit a location because they mimic what is happening in real life. Cow Head, at the northern tip of Gros Morne National Park, is pretty quiet during the winter but every spring and summer they get invaded by Theatre Newfoundland Labrador (TNL) who put on plays that are often about life in Newfoundland.

We had never been to the Coast of Bays along the south coast of Newfoundland so when we heard about the Conne River Powwow we thought that we should make a point of visiting this year....