In this travel vlog, Josh and Rachael Fillbrandt document a full day exploring Saint John, New Brunswick during a cruise port stop. They start with a quick lunch at Brit's, a locally‑recommended seafood spot, sampling a smokehouse burger, poutine, fish tacos, chowder, and local craft beers. They highlight a free walking map provided at the cruise terminal, which shows step counts and estimated walking times to attractions such as the Reversing Falls, helping them decide against a $60 hop‑on‑hop‑off tour. After lunch they walk to historic sites – the Old Loyalist Burial Ground, King Square, and the nearby container village market – sharing quick facts about burial grounds versus cemeteries. The pair then join a small‑group kayaking excursion (about $110 per person on sale) on an alternate river due to low water levels, noting the peaceful experience, lack of a bonfire because of drought, and the importance of early booking. Later they explore the container park area, try BeaverTails fried dough, and grab a beer at Wasted Day Brewing before dinner at St. John Ale House, where they enjoy a Canadian Thanksgiving meal featuring turkey, stuffing, and local haddock fish‑and‑chips. Throughout the video they share personal favorite bites, favorite moments, and practical travel advice for cruise passengers, including walkability, timing, and future cruise stops. The tone is conversational, enthusiastic, and packed with actionable tips for future visitors.
Chapters
Hey everybody, I'm Josh.
And I'm Rachael.
Come along with us as we try out 2 of the best restaurants.
And go kayaking in Saint John, New Brunswick. Let's go!
Good morning and welcome to Saint John, New Brunswick.
Yeah, we're in Canada again.
For today we are in Saint John. We are going to be doing some kayaking here in about 2 hours.
But we have We do have a little bit of time, so maybe finding a place to grab a quick bite to eat before we head out on our adventure would be the way to go. It looks very walkable right at the moment.
Yeah, and we just checked in with some locals and they said the best place is down here. It's called Brit's. Yeah, try some seafood.
Yeah, and they do give out free walking maps, and then you can also possibly—
And there's good timing.
I'll say. Then you can look at the hop-on hop-off tour as well.
The lady from the hop-on hop-off tour recommended we check out Uh, she said seafood is real good here. All these prices are in Canadian, by the way. You can take a look at that if you're interested. And they also have brunch going because it is 11:15 and we did not eat on the ship. It is a little later getting into port, but we will be here until 7:30. So after our kayaking today, we will also have dinner.
Very true.
But this place is cute.
It is very cool. I like it.
And it is just, I don't know, a quarter mile from the ship.
Yeah, not far at all.
Starting our day like champs. I ended up with a blackberry sour.
And I got the blueberry ale, and it's delicious.
Yeah, cheers.
I do think the— one of the very few places I've ever found this blueberry ale is in like this area. On my last cruise, I really enjoyed it, and I love it again. It's a good beer.
So one really cool thing is in the terminal, they hand you a nice map, and you can see, like, so we're actually way over here today, and by way over here, I mean it's like an extra block or 2, but everything is all in a very close walking distance.
Yeah, this is actually their walking map.
Yeah. Yeah. Now one of the things that Uh, St. John is known for is Reversing Rapids, but it's about an hour walk to get to. So unfortunately, we're kind of sticking around here because we do have an excursion planned, but you can go to a lot of the things very easily and just walk to it. Something else cool I just noticed is you can see how many steps and how many minutes it would take to walk to these places. So that's where the Reversing Falls is, about 50 minutes, 5,000 steps. That's a great little tip right there.
I love this, and she just handed it to us right outside of the terminal, so it was very convenient. It helped us decide between that and spending $60 a person on a hop-on hop-off tour. So really, yeah, it was very convenient for both of them.
Yeah, good job, St. John. All right, the food is here and it looks delicious. This is a smokehouse burger. You can see a little bit of barbecue sauce, some Fried onions over there, the bacon.
Smoked Gouda.
Smoked Gouda.
And the bun, I believe, is a jalapeño cheddar bun.
Yum. And then we gotta get poutine. We're in Canada, give me a break.
Yeah.
And there's curds, as there should be.
So both the burger and this next dish, the fish tacos blackened, are recommendations from our waiter.
Yeah.
So fish tacos, we added sweet potato waffle fries, and then Because the lady at the terminal told us.
This is what actually got us to come here.
Yeah, maritime chowder.
Yeah, look at this.
Oh, huge!
That is a huge bowl.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you. You're welcome. And 2 more beers. Oh, also some soda bread. These are delicious looking. All right, I do want to show this a little bit because you can see that there's like some scallops in here. There is some, I believe, haddock. Which is a local fish and it's also the fish that comes with the tacos. We did talk about doing the fish and chips, which is also a local haddock, but he preferred the tacos.
Now I'm gonna say I was a little blown away and love it. I was expecting mushy carrots in that chowder and they're not. They still have a crunch to them. I love that because it gives texture to a chowder, which is usually just so one note. That's not one note at all.
That's really good chowder. Perfect. Lunch was great.
Yeah, now we're walking straight uphill.
We are walking basically straight uphill.
What was your favorite bite at lunch? This isn't favorite bite of the day, but favorite bite at lunch.
I think the chowder.
That chowder was really good.
Yeah. I liked the burger. I think the fish bite of the chowder.
Yeah.
And there was also shrimp in there, by the way. But yours was the burger?
I think the burger. It had just a nice flavor to it. That PEI beef.
Yeah, there it is.
It's super good.
Everybody knows about PEI mussels, but we had some PEI beef as well. It's stopping to breathe, but also check out these colors. We are here in the middle of October because of fall leaf peeping. All right, just a short walk away from where we had lunch, this is the Old Loyalist Burial Ground, which Which, if this is anything like the Boston burial grounds, we learned that the difference between a burial ground and a cemetery is where the cemeteries are like upkept by churches and you're gonna have like more specific grave sites, whereas burial grounds is where there's many bodies that are buried there and that these headstones don't necessarily mean That, that's where somebody's at. Now you know the difference between a burial ground and a cemetery. And across the street from the burial ground is King Square, which has been around since the 1700s, and it's just a local park. You can see there's a few really pretty statues and then a 2-story bandstand that you can see in the center there. If you don't want to go too far into town, there does look to be this container village where you could probably get a few eats and drinks and local goods that are right outside the cruise area.
Yeah, it's glad to see this cops.
I we are here at our excursion.
We're gonna kayak today.
Yeah, we're supposed to kayak on the Hammond River, but it's too low. So instead, we're kayaking a different river. And there's a bridge.
And it's beautiful.
Yeah, it cost— I think it was about $110 per person because it was on sale. Yeah, uh, if you didn't get it on sale, I think it's $200 a person, so book early. And there's only 6 of us.
Yeah, you're gonna be fine.
Hey, we're kayaking. Looking good. On our way back to the ship, we did go to the high point in the city where you can see there are 3 ships in port today, and then the downtown area, which is over there. All right, we are back at the port. Uh, I, I thought maybe there'd be a cool way for us to talk during that, but it was— we were just kayaking for like 2 hours straight.
Yeah, it was really fun. Yeah, very peaceful. Um, it does say on there a specific river Which it depends on like the tide and the waterfall on what river you're going to go to. It also says something about a bonfire. Right now it's a drought, so they weren't allowed to do bonfires.
So no bonfire, no s'mores, just kayaking.
Just kayaking.
There's a river that we went that I can't pronounce, so I'm putting it down below right now.
And I will tell you, peaceful. So peaceful.
Yeah, I said it was like the most peaceful, Excursion I've ever had. Yeah, that was kayaking like nice casual fun kayaking, and then the colors were great.
They were very beautiful.
Yeah, she was saying that apparently we're about a week late, but you know you take take your chances with nature sometimes. Yeah, now we are back in town, which we did learn that St. John is the oldest city in Canada.
Yeah, one of the largest in New Brunswick.
Yeah, 68,000 people.
And a big thank you to Sarah for being our guide today. She runs this, only does 6 people per group. So if you're looking for a small group without paying the small group fee, there you go.
All right, but now we're gonna go ahead and walk through the container park area, just see if there's anything we need to get and maybe grab a beer before dinner.
Yeah, let's see.
Which Sarah told us that Brit's that we went to earlier was her favorite restaurant. And our dinner's her second favorite.
It's like we know what we're doing.
Yes. Looks like they have a few cute little shops that you can get some artsy stuff. There is a market here, uh, it is closed for today though because it is Canadian Thanksgiving, but there was a bunch of handcraft-made stuff on the sidewalk as we were walking All right, we did just see that BeaverTails is here. There's a big line though, so I'm not sure if we're gonna get to it, but we have had BeaverTails before. Highly recommend it. It's fried dough.
It's fried dough.
It's covered in goodies.
Yep.
You should try it. All right, time to grab a beer here at Wasted Day Brewing, and look, I'm hoping we go up top. St. John's Ale House for dinner. For dinner, it is Canadian Thanksgiving, so I had to get it. Turkey, carrots, corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing. We got a Thai—
Broccoli salad.
Classic Canadian. As well as— look at that!
An entire piece of fish.
And we got some fish and chips. Did you hear what kind of fish it is?
Haddock.
Yes, which we were told earlier that haddock is a local fish.
Local, yeah.
All right, let's see. All right, just had a great dinner over at St. John's Ale House. Yeah, or St. John Ale House.
St. John Ale House.
Yes. I think we're at the end of the day. We got to go back. We got 30 minutes to get to the ship.
We got 30 minutes to get to the ship. I don't think there's much planned on the ship, so we're probably not showing much there.
Correct. So let's start with favorite bite of today.
Mmm, I really liked the fish and chips I just had.
I was picking the same thing. I think the fish was delicious.
The fish, for one, the portion size was ginormous. Yes, but it was so lightly battered.
Wow, I agree.
So good.
Fish and chips was my choice. The fish itself.
Yeah, the fish itself.
And then favorite moment of today?
Mine was just being out on that river. It was so peaceful, so serene. Oh, absolutely gorgeous.
I'm saying the same thing.
Yeah, again.
Yeah, it was just— it was a really good freaking day though.
It was a good day in St. John.
Yeah, and I'll admit I didn't really know what all there was.
We didn't.
By the way, check out those guys behind us. If you ever watch Las Vegas videos, you should check them out. Show Me Vegas.
But I, I'm with you. Like, I didn't know what to expect in St. John, but it was amazing. And it's— it like, in town is very walkable.
It is. It was a much like— it was a pleasant surprise. Yeah, I had a good day. Now we do have a couple more stops this cruise. We are going to be going to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Sydney, Nova Scotia.
Yep. And Portland, Maine.
And Portland, Maine. So we've got a few more stops as well as Boston is going to be coming up too, where we spend 2 days there.
So pretty much what—
And we had a lot.
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