October 23- Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

From Cindy: Hello everyone. This morning Val texted me the following: Loved Prince Edward Island. Best port, flat, vast expanses of farmland. Lots of fall colors but mainly seen from the bus. Had delicious lobster, finally. Cruising down St. Lawrence River today and arriving in Quebec in the morning. Have had little or no time to shop. Hope to make that up in Quebec. It will be 34 degrees there. Still coughing and hoarse, but feeling better. Left knee feeling better and other than both being stiff, not bad.

From Val--We had a bus tour of Prince Edward Island. The area is very flat with lots of farmland. It reminded me a lot of my Mom’s town in NW Washington State and Whidbey Island there. They have very little crime here, costs of living are low, and its primarily a vacation spot where they rent out their “cottages”.

We started seeing more Fall colors but again, out of the bus windows.

 

Our first stop was for a lobster lunch. LOBSTER!! It was at a former butter factory which had been preserved and turned into a restaurant and a co-op shop to sell locally preserved jams.

Lunch began with a hot bowl of curried carrot soup, and a small “loaf” of bread, so delicious! I’m starting to get hooked on real butter too. And then came the 1 ½ lb lobster. We could have eaten 3 of those, they were so good. The meat was sweet and they told us the secret is the COLD salt water they have. Yes, definitely cold here. It came with a delicious coleslaw that tastes so much better than we have in the US. Wish I knew their secret. 

This was our view out the window as we ate. I also loved the combination of the blue bottles and greenery as part of the inside décor. 

 After eating, we got to shop in their gift shop and taste jams. As we were tasting some of them, hubby was so impressed he said we need to order some Xmas gift sets for his guys at work. And of course, other friends too. They ship to the US so I’m trying to get him to nail down how many to order now since it takes a while to get here.  and I bought a bag of their Xmas blend tea too. The jams were a bit heavy so we decided it would be best to order online later. This is their website: https://preservecompany.com/ Remember the US prices will be much less than the Canadian it’s showing.

Then we headed off to the Anne of Green Gables museum, which is a house that used to belong to the author, Lucy Maude Montgomery’s cousins, where she often stayed and wrote her books. It’s been preserved with décor described in her book where Anne lived. I wasn’t able to take a photo of the front of the house due to so many people in line to get in, so my one photo is of the back of it. You can see more photos of it on their website. https://www.annemuseum.com/

We ended up having only 5 minutes to go into the gift shop before the bus was leaving, so all I could grab was a small book on the house, and a bag of Maple Taffy. Its pretty good, according to hubby. From the https://www.tallshipstrading.com/   

 

And then there was the mad rush to get back to the ship. It caught the tour company by surprise that we had to be back early because normally we had another hour. We heard the main reason we have to leave earlier than normal is because of the migration of white whales down the Saint Lawrence River where we will be going. The only white whales we could find that use this route are Beluga so we’re excited that we might see some. Sadly, no whales were seen.

These were the beautiful views of the coastline as our ship pulled out of the harbor.

The ship continued on around the island and further north around New Brunswick to take us into the Saint Lawrence River. The next morning it was cold, windy and cloudy outside on the ocean, and some people said they could see snow coming down.
  NEXT DAY --   https://2018fallcolorscruise.blogspot.com/2018/11/october-24-25-quebec-city.html