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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.

Of all my travels around Newfoundland this summer, visiting Prime Berth Heritage Centre in Twillingate was one of my most memorable experiences. An interactive, interpretative centre created by David Boyd as a tribute to the culture and heritage of his fishing forefathers, Prime Berth is hard to miss as you're driving across the causeway...

The Corner Brook-Humber Valley area of Western Newfoundland has some of the best autumn foliage in the province due the extensive stands of birch as well as colourful maples in many places. One of our favourite trails to hike is on the International Appalachian Trail from Humber Village to Barry's Lookout.

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.

There are so many things to enjoy when I go back home to Newfoundland. From spending time with family and friends to hiking along the rugged coast, and taking in live music in St. John's. One of the things I look most forward to is getting out in a boat to catch a few cod.

This is the iceberg season that just won't stop! The Petermann Ice Island which I wrote about in several earlier posts in mid August, 2011 is now making its appearance closer to Corner Brook. Not long after we were in St. Anthony the ice island drifted to the south and broke in half. These 2 pieces have been spawning icebergs that have now drifted into the Hampden area of White Bay.

I fell in love with St. John's, Newfoundland after spending 8 days and nights there in late summer 2011.  It's North America's oldest and most Easterly city. In the 2nd installment of an ongoing series of articles about this rocky wonderland, here's a fond look back at the hiking and walking opportunities.

As our trip to Newfoundland stretched out before us, I knew I would blog about it and I knew instantly that the theme would be gratitude to the people of Newfoundland. So it’s serendipitous that in the last few days I started reading so many words of thanks to the people of Newfoundland from the stranded passengers of 9/11 who were taken into their homes and made to feel like family.

I spent last week getting culturally back in touch with my English Lit student days. First, I went to see Hamlet on a hill, then Henry IV, Part 1 out in one of North America’s oldest and most historic towns, Cupids...

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.

Fogo Island is undergoing an interesting experiment spearheaded by the Shorefast Foundation, which is trying to promote the social, cultural and economic regeneration of the area. From the development of a new inn slated to open in 2012 to new artist studios dotted around the island, Fogo has suddenly been put on the radar as a place where new things are happening. So we decided to have a look at the artist studios through a tour put on by the Fogo Island Arts Corporation .

We were blessed with sunny skies as we left the Paradise Bed and Breakfast in Twillingate on Wednesday August 24 and headed for the 11:15 am ferry at Farewell enroute for Fogo Island. On Fogo we had wanted to do some hiking and also find out more about the new artists’ studios that are being built there. From our research, we knew  the community of Fogo has good hiking trails. We started with a Fogo classic- the hike to the top of Brimstone Head.

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.

Four days with Writers at Woody Point, and I’m more inspired than I’ve been my whole life. As Canadian travel journalist Lucy Izon said one evening while taking the water taxi to Woody Point, there’s a sense of community here. Like Banff, I’m so awed by the overwhelming hospitality from everyone...

“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.

On the last leg of their adventure, the hikers from TrailPeak.com saw the wreck of a ship from the early 1900s, whalebones, and a slew of icebergs.

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.

Who would have guessed that an event in Greenland a little over a year ago would bring tourists flooding to the St. Anthony area this summer? On August 5, 2010, a large piece of the Petermann Glacier broke off and became an “ice island” measuring 280 square km in size.  A year later it has worked its way south and is now off of St. Anthony at the tip of the Northern Peninsula. 

This week, the hikers from TrailPeak.com saw 10,000-year-old icebergs, and visited historic Battle Harbour, a restored fishing village that thrived over the last three centuries.