Canada!

So Canada happened. One week in a sweet little apartment with my mom, exploring Prince Edward Island and trying my darnedest not to look exactly like Anne of Green Gables. The Island is beautiful and had some wonderful weather. The people took a chapter straight out of their Celtic heritage and were extremely friendly! Even though we never found a place to go exploring my wetlands (bad weather the last two days and extreme exhaustion made it impossible) we had a lot of fun.

We flew into PEI on Saturday, went straight to our apartment and slept. Then food of course. Charlottetown had several great restaurants, but they're all pretty fancy for what we wanted. We ended up in the Old Dublin Pub for dinner. To wrap up the plainest day of vacation ever we went grocery shopping, then home and slept more.

I think we look pretty good for having not slept and been on planes for 24 hours

The second day was a little more exciting. We drove north in the central part of the Island in search of Green Gables stuff. Be forewarned: almost everything on PEI that is touristy is closed on Sundays and Mondays. This includes things like the Green Gables house, though the land is open and museums. Since we couldn't find our way into the attractions we were looking for we spent most of the day hopping from location to location, taking short hikes and talking to the locals (natch).

Mom outside of Green Gables

The cellar and foundation of LM's childhood home in Cavendish

We had a late lunch at a little restaurant east of Cavendish, "Amanda's," which is open seasonally and had opened only the day before. A local had recommended it, and it was the first place we'd seen that wasn't a coffee shop or a nicer restaurant. While this is the kind of atmosphere we wanted (everyone in the place was local not just to PEI but also to that town) I think we paid the price with the quality of the food. One would think that on an island that produces so many potatoes your potato products would always be fresh, but apparently frozen french fries are very popular. I was still behind on sleep at this point so we went home, I slept and we watched the first "Anne of Green Gables" movie that night.

Most everything Anne-oriented is closed Sunday and Monday even during the tourist season (July 1-August 31), so on Monday we tried to go to the east side of the island in hopes of reaching the Myriad View Artisan Distillery which makes moonshine! (thanks tumblr for bringing random PEI attractions to my attention). Along the way we stopped at a historic village which was pretty cool.

The moonshine distillery was definitely the highlight of the east coast, small as it was. I think the idea of moonshine for Americans is just fun.

Mom and the distillery operator

Day 4 everything actually was open so we went back to Green Gables and all of the LM Montgomery museums. If you're attempting to do this I would read a good guide book and choose at most 3 places to go. Everything costs $4 per person and has the same information. We finally ran out of steam and stopped going into places. Learning a little more about the author and walking in the places she used to inspire her books, and probably my favorite heroine of all time was amazing, even though we over did it.

Anne's bedroom recreated in Montgomery's uncle's home a.k.a. "Green Gables"

Lovers Lane. But actually, it's the real Lover's Lane

Day 5, well day 5 was pretty awesome. We had a lazy morning, ate in a very Portland-esque cafe, and around 2 headed over to the local theater to see Anne and Gilbert: the musical. I was a skeptical of going to see a musical of my two favorite characters as anyone, but it was completely worth it. Every actor performed well, the script kept to the books well enough that I wasn't complaining, and the songs are still stuck in my head. Literally, it's been 2.5 weeks and I listened to the soundtrack last night. The more popular play Anne of Green Gables doesn't run until after Canada day, so we completely missed it, but it's place was well held by A&G. Plus, the guy playing Gil isn't half bad looking (I mean seriously, how sweet are they together?).

The last day was just packing airports and flights. Ultimately, it was a great way to spend a last week with my mom before moving 1/3rd of the way around the world.