'PEI' As The Cool Kids Say...

Days 9 - 11: 283 miles, destination Prince Edward Island, NB, Canada

Total miles: 1976

Prince Edward Island (PEI) reminds me of Ireland a lot. There is a lot of green, rolling hills, the sweet smell of grass, cows, potatoes, and churches. I honestly swear I smelled peat burning too (IYKYK). Man I miss that smell. The last two (potatoes and churches) are things that jumped out at me right away. There are little roadside potato stands all over the place where locals sell the potatoes they grow in their gardens, and PEI potatoes are goooooood. I ate so many potatoes on PEI that by the time I got to Quebec I didn't eat any of the fries that came with my meals because they just weren't as good.

This collage is just a small smattering of the churches here. They're all gorgeous and have at least one spire. I just had to Google how many there are. Three hundred. There are three hundred churches on PEI (as of 2015).

- There are only 164,000 people on PEI.

- It's only 140 miles long.

- At it's widest point it's 40 miles wide.

- And there are 300 churches, and they all kind of look like these. I.e., gorgeous.

I just find that wildly interesting.

One of the most notable attractions on PEI is the Anne of Green Gables museum.

This is where Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote, and some of the places described in her books are from the estate itself. The museum itself was very small, but it was still cool being in the same place where Anne was written. They've reverted her bedroom to what it would have been when she was there as well. The property is still owned by the same family after all of these years! The property is beautiful and the shimmering lake does indeed shimmer! It's only a few dollars to go check out and explore, and if you're a fan of literature even in the slightest it's absolutely worth it.

My next stop was to check out one of PEI's beaches. I'd already read that they are red sand, so I knew to expect something different than Florida beaches or any of the beaches I grew up with in South Jersey.

I love to go shelling, but there were very few to be found here. There were lots of bits of shells but not a full one to be found aside from this tiny one that I did find!

I finished up my first day in PEI exploring Charlottetown, which unlike everywhere else I seem to go, is not a cute little fishing village! It's an actual town only a ten minute drive or so from where I was staying. It was nice to be in a city for a while that isn't big like Halifax but also isn't purely a tourist destination.

The intention of day two was to see some sites, but also to get my fill of coastal food. I started in the coastal village of Victoria after seeing suggestions online to not miss out on the Lobster Barn. I'm so glad I took their advice because that lobster roll was delicious, and probably the last one I'll have on this trip, and I've gotta shout out the side salad - it was just as good!

Second stop of the day was at the Bottle Houses, or les Maisons de Bouteilles since they are in the French speaking region of PEI.

Just one man, a ton of bottles, some cement, and a crazy idea.

I can only imagine what his peers thought of him at the time, but looking at them now, they're pretty cool. Oh, and *shocker*, he built a chapel - just another church in the land of churches.

Last stop of the day was the Oyster Barn on Malpeque Bay. I don't think oysters get much fresher than sitting on the bay the oysters are harvested from while eating said oysters.

I had 1/2 dozen of their small oysters of the day and their fish cakes as my entree. Everything was delicious - the fish cakes were HUGE.

I had stopped here the previous day not realized they didn't open until 4, and lordt am I glad I went back!

I'm a little tired of driving at this point, just because I've been criss-crossing PEI in a very uneconomical way. I could spend a week here if someone else were to cart me around from place to place. I would probably not be so tired of driving if I had a plan mapped out as opposed to ping ponging around willy nilly in whichever direction I decide the next stop was. It's kind of insanity, but PEI is so small that it lends itself easily to this non-plan. It's also beautiful, so driving through farmland and coast was not so bad.

PEI is such a strange mix here of land and sea - I don't think I've ever been so surrounded by farm and grass and beach and sea at the same time. It's a combination of some of my favorite smells and I dig it. Oh, and of course, POTATOES. I got a couple of snaps of the potato stands on my way off PEI. I mean, this is the dream...

xoxo

iamfunchris