St. John's is an interestingly built city -- built on a mountain, really. From where our hostel is -- traditionally, these house are called "salt box houses" (we are in the yellow one), the houses literally go down at a fairly steep incline to the harbor.
We were thankful for sunshine and warm weather today (Thursday, June 18)...+27 degrees it got up to (but, still windy off the ocean, so it didn't feel that hot). We went to a couple local historical spots: Cape Spear & Signal Hill. Both were very interesting.
Cape Spear boasts the oldest surviving lighthouse in Newfoundland and Labrador, and is located at the most easterly point of land in North America. It has been restored to its 1839 appearance and shows how a lightkeeper and his family might have lived in the mid-19th century. 
We got a personal tour through the facility, and ended the site with a great walk down interpretative trails that led to the underground remains of Fort Cape Spear, a Second World War coastal defence battery, silent reminders of the dangers faced by shipping during that conflict!
Signal Hill...7 km away from Cape Spear...worked in conjunction with Cape Spear as far as signally to them regarding boats coming in (they used many different flags to signal -- each flag had a meaning). You could see for miles, and miles, and miles. Amazing view. Here, the French and English BATTLED it out for many years going back to the 1600s. In the long run, the English won out, but it was through a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
Signal Hill was the reception point of the first transatlantic wireless signal by Guglielmo Marconi in 1901, as well as the site of harbour defences for St. John's from the 18th century to the Second World War. Sadly, conditions were very poor for military families living there, and deaths occurred resulting in the government moving families out.
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