Charlottetown, PEI – small place, big fun

We took two excursions today. The first took us to the Green Gables Heritage Place and the Cavendish Cliffs Oceanview Overlook in Prince Edward Island National Park, which are both on the north side of the island. Charlottetown is on the south side, so we also got to enjoy scenery in both directions, starting with downtown.

Province House (Birthplace of Confederation)
St. Paul’s Parish Church
It’s Scarecrow Month in Charlottetown!
Old county jail, now a bar/restaurant

We reached the Green Gables historic site about 45 minutes after we left the port; there’s a visitor centre, the house where Lucy Maud Montgomery’s cousins lived (she was a frequent visitor there, and they helped inspire her to write Anne of Green Gables), a couple of walking trails, and the inevitable gift shop. We had a bit over an hour there, which wasn’t quite enough to see everything.

Green Gables
Lego Green Gables
The real house
Crow on the Haunted Wood trail
A celebrity cemetery!
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Grave
Back in the Haunted Wood
Mink on the boardwalk
Lovers’ Lane Trail

Our next stop was the Ocean View Overlook at the Cavendish Cliffs area of Prince Edward Island National Park.

Cavendish Literary Festival
Cavendish Cliffs Oceanview Lookout
Cavendish Cliffs
Herring Gull on the Rocks
New London Lighthouse
Lots of lobster traps
Maybe next time
Mussel farming
Our guide said these were oystermen
Llama guarding other livestock
More scarecrows (at the Lobster Pot at the Port)

We had lunch on the ship, which might have been a mistake because our second excursion, a solar-powered pedal bus excursion through downtown Charlottetown, took us to two bars: The Old Triangle for potato skins, sweet potato fries, and beer, then to 1858 Caesar Bar for chicken wings and other adult beverages (their speciality is a Caesar, which is a Bloody Mary with Clamato juice – not on either of our diets!). We also drove by the beach at Victoria Park. But it wasn’t a good excursion for photography because the rain shields were deployed.

Our afternoon sightseeing vehicle

This evening, Mike Pendergast came back for more island music during cocktail hour; he was, again, delightful. He told me he deliberately doesn’t have any social media presence, but his son, who is also a musician, does: Shane Pendergast.

Our after-dinner entertainment was a local storyteller and comedian, Patrick Ledwell. He kept us laughing with PEI stories!

I would like to have had more time to explore Charlottetown and PEI, but we’re off to our next port, Pictou, Nova Scotia.

Sailing along

The seas calmed down soon after I posted last night’s blog and we had a good night’s sleep, though our Apple Watches thought we got under two hours of sleep and were awake from 2am onward!

On days at sea, ships provide lots of games and activities to keep the guests busy; this morning, Diane and I won today’s trivia session. There also was a door-decorating contest; since I have no artistic talent, I used Image Playground on my iPhone to create our entry, inspired by Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images – Wikipedia“. Unsurprisingly, we did not win.

The big event of the day was going under the Confederation Bridge, Canada’s longest bridge (about 8 miles long). There are quite a few curves in the bridge, not for structural reasons but because the alternative was an 8-mile-long straightaway and probable highway hypnosis!

We could see the bridge for about an hour before we reached it; there were a lot of buoys for lobster traps along our path, and I happened to see a fishing boat loaded with traps (I don’t know if they were full or ready to be deployed) while I was on deck.

Of course there were seabirds flying around us.

Juvenile Herring Gull

Ships going under the bridge are required to have a local pilot; ours arrived on a spiffy red boat about 25 minutes before we reached the bridge.

It was nice to be outside in the sun and fairly mild temperatures. Diane and I took a few laps around the top deck (she was much more virtuous than I was – I got bored!).

I was surprised to see channel markers on the bridge supports, but between them and the pilot, we made it safely through. :-)

After that, we went back in to hear our guest speaker’s talk “Konnichiwa, Anne!” about Anne of Green Gables and its influence in Japan.

We docked in Charlottetown, PEI during dinner. A local singer/songwriter, Mike Pendergast, came aboard as our after-dinner entertainment and he was wonderful – lots of songs about PEI and its people. He’s returning tomorrow evening, and I hope he brings some CDs with him!