Usually after a few weekends refraining from traveling, I get the blues. It's the small town kind of blues, the ones where you realize the highlight of your day is a trip to a home building supply superstore.
I definitely think that you can make any place a cool place to live, and I think my little town is cool. But. There are a few things I miss. There are lots of really good reasons to live here, but I am more talking about the things-to-do-on-a-Saturday (or lack-thereof).
Some stuff we like to do on weekends:
- Since we live right beside a beautiful harbour, a jog or walk, always. My little 4 km loop that I like to jog is so scenic. I get to run across two bridges and all along the water. And I don't have to drive anywhere. I can leave right from our house.
- Booster Juice. I love being able to go somewhere and order a green juice whenever I want. Sometimes it's nice to leave my juicer under the cupboard.
- Go grocery shopping. We don't have any really great/huge grocery stores, but we have three medium sized ones (no frills, sobeys, coop), and if you really take your time and look carefully, you can find most things you need. We (maybe lamely) make a date out of it and get coffees and stuff.
- OK, so there is usually some type of community event, and we pretty much always go. Most times it is a yard sale at the middle school or lions club. Last weekend it was a rubber duck race in the harbor.
- Movies. There is a movie theatre here, which has two screens. Movies are not something we really do anymore, partly because of Cohen, partly because I like watching movies at home.
- Go out for breakfast/lunch/supper. We do this all the time. There is no high-end restaurant here, but there is a handful of average priced places that serve the usual hamburgers, chicken fingers, pizza. We go to Dustabella's all the time (an average priced restaurant in a hotel).
- Hang out at home. I love this more than ever, which is good since it is something we do a lot of. Lots of people around here have cabins that they spend their weekends at. And lots of people have machines like snowmobiles and 4-wheelers and dirt bikes.
- And there are other things like throw a frisbee at the ball diamond, go to the little library, um, check the mail (even though mail doesn't come on weekends), go furniture shopping (though our house has a limit)
What I wish Clarenville had:
- Coffee Shop! This is huge. I would love to have a place that you can order a coffee or espresso and sit and chat and people-watch.
- Some type of food-selling establishment other than a grocery store, like perhaps a bakery where we could get fresh buns and croissants. Or a market where we could get local produce. Or a butcher that sold local meat. Or an ethnic grocery store.
- Hot yoga. I used to love hot yoga when we lived in Halifax, and then even Gander got a hot yoga studio right before we left. I would settle for normal yoga with hours that catered to people with 9-5 jobs.
- Bikeability. This may not be a word, but what would be cool is if you could bike around Clarenville. You truly can't. I am not just being wimpy about it. It is not possible because the roads are super narrow and hilly and dangerous. However, you can bike up and down the street we live on, which might get old really fast.
- Cool restaurant(s). I would be thrilled with sushi, indian, chinese (not the chicken balls and red sauce kind, which we have in spades), vegetarian, local (like how in St. John's there are all these cool places that serve moose meat and locally grown everything), fancy, deli, sandwich, etc. Most places here are diner-ish, which is cool. But sometimes it's nice to step outside that box.
- Some type of downtown area that you could walk around and see things and people. There is a small (tiny) mall.
- Bookstore. Though we have a little decent library, so beggars can't be choosers.
Anyway, I guess my point is that sometimes I feel a little down about our little town. But this is our first full summer here, so maybe a month from now I will be loving this place, and feeling like there is tons of stuff to do. In the meantime, our pantry and fridge is jam-packed from all the grocery shopping we do. And we have had numerous Tim Horton's and Mcdonald's dates. We might start hanging out at the seasonal craft/overpriced candle store that just opened last weekend. We have options.
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