~Prince Edward Island - Day 4~

 Another rainy day today.  We decided to explore Charlottetown, the capital of Prince Edward Island. Charlottetown calls itself the birthplace of Canada, for here in 1864 the Fathers of Confederation met here for the first time.

This is Peakes Wharf - a lovely harbour with lots of little cafes, souvenir shops etc...

  There are at times several cruise ships in the harbour and in 2012 Charlottetown Seaport will welcome over 55 cruise ships.

 The famous "Cows" ice-cream shop.  They claim to have Canada's best ice-cream!   I don't know.......Beacon Hill Drive In is hard to beat !!!

 After our walk at the harbour we headed into town and "happened" to hit "Farm Day in the City".  This market is only one day a year.   As we arrived we were all given re-usable bags and by the end of our walk through the market we had 12 bags, 5 jars of carrot cake jam, 7 pens, 4 microwave egg cookers, 2 egg spice packets and several honey candies - ALL FREE!!

 This is the "Anne of Green Gables Chocolate Shoppe" where they make all the "Cow Chips".  These are chocolate covered plain chips.

 They have carriage tours throughout the town.

 We had planned to go to Province House but when we got there discovered it was closed due to it being Sunday and off season - aahh!!

 There are SO many historical and beautiful buildings throughout Charlottetown.   This is St.Paul's Church.

 This is St. Dunstan's Basilica -it is one of Canada's largest churches and is known for its twin Gothic Spires, an impressive altar and fine Italian carvings.

 This is Beaconsfield Historic House - Built in 1877 it stands as a symbol of Victorian elegance.  We also saw the Charlottetown City Hall, Confederation Centre of the Arts, All Souls' Chapel National Historic Site and Government House - the official residence of the Lieutenant Governor of PEI.

~Prince Edward Island - Day 3~

Another fun day on PEI.   It was pouring rain today so we started off by going to the bottle house.   We debated about going in as the boys learned about this last year, but the lady said the houses were all outside and the weather was not at all nice.   We took what photos we could from the car window.

Quite amazing though.

We spent the day driving along the coast.   This is one of the many fishing harbours.

We have been wanting to buy lobster from a fishing boat since we arrived in the Maritimes and today was the day !  We sat in our van while we waited for the boat to come in.....then it was a mad rush to "beat the wholesalers" and purchase a few for ourselves.   So much fun!

This is a photo of some of the lobsters that they had caught today.

We promptly emptied our cooler which contained our water and lunch and asked the nice man if we could buy seven lobsters for dinner - woo hoo!!   Look at the colour of them before you cook them.

WOW - here are our lobsters after being cooked for 25 minutes - yummy !

Seriously..... the price in restaurants for a lobster range from $20 - $35 for one lobster dish!!!   Now......times that x 7 people - I don't think so.......... BUT......buying straight off the boat we had the same experience (if not better - doing it in an rv !!!!!) for $20 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AND........DELICIOUS IT WAS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~Prince Edward Island - Day 2~

We had another fantastic day - what a beautiful place this Prince Edward Island is!   Everywhere you turn there are more bays, farms, sea cliffs, white and sandy beaches, boats in harbours and quaint villages.   We are just loving it!

We began our day in New London where we were able to see the Lucy Maud Montgomery Birthplace.   A modest green and white house in a quiet neighbourhood.

Then off to Green Gables Heritage Site.   LOVELY~!!!   We all had so much fun trying on Anne's hair!!

Here is "Green Gables" the house that L.M. Montgomery used as her inspiration in writing her "Anne of Green Gable" books. We were able to walk through the house - all very interesting.

The boys busy doing their "Explorer" books while walking through the site.

We walked down "Lovers Lane" and then we walked  the "Balsam Hollow Trail" as well as the "Haunted Wood Trail".   All so pretty and lots of Lucy's quotes throughout the walks.

We stopped in Prince Edward Island Provincial Park for lunch.

This is Malpeque Harbour.   We watched some fishing boats coming in.   They had caught eel, rock crab and flounder.   There are oyster and mussels farms everywhere.

It was amazing that Anne happened to be at the PEI Dirt Shirt Shop while we were visiting there!!!

Look at this - a red fox on the side of the road!!!   Then within a few kms we saw another 5 :)

Another great view of the coast.

Then on our way back to the campsite we saw a bunch of machinery and people working.   We stopped the van and went in and asked if they could show us around the potato sorting plant.  The guy was so sweet to us all and it was incredible to see how the potatoes went from the field, to the sorting plant and then to the large storage barn.

The barn was only about 1/4 full and there were SOOOOO many potatoes already!!   That's going to make a whole lot of french fries :)

The potatoes were HUGE.   The man was kind enough to give us each a potato.   The one on the left is one we had bought at the store earlier in the week and the one on the right is one of the ones he gave us.   We weighed them and they were all around 1 pound each!!!   

Guess what we had for dinner?????  Potatoes!!!!   We baked them and added chicken, onions, broccoli and cheese sauce - SO YUMMY!!!!     Another great day!

~Prince Edward Island~

We made it!!   We are now in the province of Prince Edward Island - yippee!   We had to take the "new" Confederation Bridge" over from New Brunswick to PEI.  The bridge is an amazing structure that took 4 years to build, approximately 5000 people were employed and it's designed to last 100 years.   Their slogan is "take the high road".

It was incredible driving on it.  The bridge is 13 kms long and once you are about half way over it, the bridge gets higher so ships can travel underneath it.  Also..... you have an amazing view of the entire island as you approach it.   Red sandy cliffs and wide beaches welcome you to this lovely place.

Of course......"Anne" welcomed us too!!!

When we got to the other side we asked where we could get a good photo of the bridge - here it is!!

We are staying at a beautiful campsite where once again the Harper's are "roughing" it while "camping"!