Canada’s Birthplace PEI Charlottetown
Building where Canada was born under renovation
Purple Bike B & B
Harbour Charlottetown
Fixing yet another fork seal
Endless Beaches Prince Edward Island National Park
Mont-Carmel Acadian Church
Cemetery either “Gallant” or “Arsenault”
Blueberry Social at Green Park Shipbuilding Museum
Confederation Bridge
Visiting Karen and Beckett
Our next destination was Prince Edward Island, where we booked a couple of nights at Astrid’s bed and breakfast. For Heinz and me P.E.I. is the one Province of Canada that we have not seen.
We took a scenic ride along the coast via Antigonish to Caribou, Nova Scotia where the ferry to P.E.I. was leaving. No need to pay to get to P.E.I. but you pay when you leave the island.
So yesterday late in the afternoon we arrived at Astrid’s purple bike B&B. She is from Hamburg Germany and once fell in love with P.E.I and opened up this place some years ago. She still spends the winter months in Hamburg, works at a radio station and…rides a purple 1977 BMW. She has a lovely old house with a German touch to it!
We dropped our stuff at her place and went out for dinner right at the ocean. We enjoyed our first P.E.I seafood and…it was absolutely delicious!
For the first night we had separate bedrooms, Jane had her own and so did Heinz and me. Something for a change!!
On Thursday we spent all day exploring Charlottetown…oh before that we rode to a friend of Astrid’s, who owns a bike repair shop. Heinz needed to change the other leaking fork seal of my bike and could dispose of the old oil at the shop. He is a real expert now after 3 changes!
Charlottetown is a neat town, not very big and of course the birthplace of the Canadian Confederation 150 years ago. Unfortunately the Confederation Building was under construction so we weren’t allowed inside. We saw the marina, the historic old town with beautiful old houses as well as the Fanningbank, which is the house of the Lieutenant Governor, who actually just left when we came and he waved at us…really!
The next day Astrid had suggested a bike route for us. We rode up north to the central coast to P.E.I. National Park and spent some time at the beach. Too cool to swim though! We purposefully avoided Cavendish (big tourist town due to Anne of Green Gables!), stopped at Victoria-by -the-sea, a cute historic little town and enjoyed some home made chocolate. On the way back we stopped at Fort Amherst, another National Historic Site. Not much to see there, but rather learn about what happened.
From 1720 to 1770 Port-la-Joye, later named Fort Amherst, served as the seat of government and port of entry for settlers to the island while under both French and British control. As such, it played an important role as a colonial outpost in the French-British struggle for dominance in North America.
The British treated the poor Acadians horribly by trying to deport them all. They spread out to France, Haiti, the southern US and some of them later came back.
On Saturday morning we said our good-byes to our new friend Astrid and headed towards the north western part of P.E.I. to the Jacques Cartier Prov. Park. We wanted to camp again. By the time we arrived, the weather had turned so bad, it was raining heavily with gusty winds.
We decided to turn around and head for Summerside, hoping we would find an affordable Motel instead. The Green Acres Motel was on the outskirts of Summerside, was affordable and even had a cooking area as well. We stayed for 2 nights and from there we ventured out again to other areas like Tyne valley, we even went to a blueberry social on Sunday at the Green Park Shipbuilding museum and Yeo House. We enjoyed a delicious piece of blueberry pie and listened to some local music.
On Monday it was time to say good-bye to P.E.I. We rode over the Confederation Bridge back into New Brunswick. Heinz had called his colleague Karen Conrad, who was visiting her parents in Pugwash, N.S. We stopped by to see her and had a coffee with her family.