Days 115-117 (August 25-27): Charlottetown, PEI

Charlottetown is very quaint. It is actually much quainter than I expected: coming in. I thought its population was a robust 80,000 or so; it turns out it is only 38,000, which explains (at least to me) why it was a lot smaller than I thought it would be.  The Island itself only has 140,000 inhabitants.  (This is a province?  Really?  Oi.)  How small is Charlottetown?  I randomly ran into the one person I know in town and it only took a day and a half. Now, mind you, this was the one thing I had set out to accomplish and I did not have to resort to stalking, so this was, on the whole, probably good.

The tourism infrastructure is clearly not set up to deal with the likes of me (solo traveller who, gasp, does not drive). There seems to be one company that provides mini-bus trips from Charlottetown to the countryside. Their half-day trip was sold out (all 24 spaces) for the day at which I was looking. (The key elements of the trip [Anne of Green Gables farmhouse and a preserve factory] were not exactly in my wheelhouse, but it was in the countryside.) There was a culinary walking tour which looked interesting, but it was not running on that same day because it was 'cruise day' and the people running it were too busy.

So I basically ambled around. And did laundry.

And I ate fairly well:

- I went to Tower Street Fish 'n Chips twice (haddock, then cod). It was possibly the second best fish 'n chips I have had: fresh, not overly battered or greasy and still flakey. Heck, the chips were darn good. (Leo Burdock's in Dublin, seeing as you are asking...)

- The Pilot House brews their own beer and offers an upper scale menu, mostly centred around seafood and PEI products. I opened with oysters, which seems like the thing to do in PEI, and had the PEI pork and scallops as an entrée. I am not entirely sure why pulled pork and scallops should be served together, but both were cooked perfectly and quite good. The restaurant itself is quite nice, almost with a traditional steak house feel to the decor (lots of wood), albeit with too much Montréal Canadiens memorabilia behind the bar.

- There is a brew pub, Gahan House. Their beers are drinkable.

Finally, I listened to a duo (fiddle and guitar) play some nice traditional Celtic Folk at the Aulde Triangle. Of note, they sell glasses at the bar. No, not that kind of glasses, this kind of glasses:

Random observations:

- The duelling Anne of Green Gables musicals across the street from another... Well, that just says it all, doesn't it?

- On the same day I ran into my friend, I also ran into three former colleagues on Queen Street (Charlottetown's main drag).  To top it off, after having dinner in a Georgetown restaurant by the water (with said friend), I ran into my MP. (The Liberal caucus was having a retreat in PEI.). A very random day.