Day
3: Friday, 8/24—PEIDay
3: Friday, 8/24—PEIAfter breakfast at the Rodd, we drove north to what we were hoping were the L.M. Montgomery sites. Unfortunately, we discovered more of that Canadian confusion in the form of incredibly poorly marked road signs. We detoured into the national park and drove around some dunes before finding our way out and past a few interesting craft shops over to the Cheeselady’s Gouda establishment, a one-woman cheese “factory” that makes many kinds of Gouda (sheep, cow, and flavored, at different levels of aging) according to old-world methods. We liked the windows into the cheese-making rooms, and the free video and samples, and we also liked the very emotional woman who told us about the coyotes on the island who menace their sheep (despite the best efforts of the protective llamas). We left (of course) with a lot of Gouda (excellent) and a bottle of their own milk (very good). “Yum,” said Robert. “I can taste the fear of coyote in this cheese.”
By this point it was lunch time, even though with our wrong turns, and with the steady rain that had been coming down since even before we left our hotel in the morning, we took a quick walk through Rustico Harbor and then went over to Carr’s oysters for a two-part lunch. Part 1 was in the oyster shack and seafood market, where we bought an oyster knife, got a quick lesson in shucking oysters, and got eight or so oysters to shuck ourselves. The employees were happy to talk to us about oysters, and we bought some smoked eel to bring back home (along with our Gouda). We shucked the oysters on a picnic table outside of Carr’s restaurant (which was about to be Part 2 of our lunch), while the rain abated to a mere drizzle for the moment. Excellent oysters—I love the briny taste of Malpeques! Even more excellently, no one cut him- or herself shucking the oysters. In the restaurant we had fish cakes with baked beans, a lobster roll, steamed mussels, and a fisherman’s platter, all of which were very good.
Thus fortified, we headed into the heart of “Anne’s Land,” as some people call it. Being more of an Emily lover than Anne, myself, I take exception to that. I had already told Robert that Emily was my favorite character, and The Story Girl my favorite book by Montgomery—it was great, therefore, when we found out Montgomery herself felt the same way.
First
we stopped at Silver Bush, now lived in by a cousin of Montgomery’s, and
privately owned and partly open to the public. “Do you have a trash can?”
Robert asked the older woman who was at the front desk. He waved his plastic
milk bottle in the air. She whisked it away from him and stuck it into the wood-burning
stove—which, now that we thought about it, was indeed emitting a comforting,
wood-scented warmth—in the corner of the kitchen. “Oh my,”
Robert said, “an incinerator.” (Later on, we referred to her as
“the woman who incinerated his milk.”) Silver Bush is the house
where L.M. Montgomery got married, and people can still be married in the parlor;
supposedly this is particularly big among Japanese couples. Though there wasn’t
a wedding that day, we were glad that there were at least two Japanese tour
groups at the house at the same time as we were.
Next
(after a detour/wrong turn/Canadian confusion) we headed over to Montgomery’s
birthplace. No, we’re not doing this in chronological order. . . The birthplace
is also privately run, and was very nice, with a young woman who was clearly
being trained as a tour guide. We nodded encouragingly at her as she talked.
At this point we took an ice cream break, stopping at the Cavendish Boardwalk outpost of Cows, a PEI ice cream and tee shirt chain with really clever cow tee shirts and some pretty good ice cream. It was very crowded, and very touristy, but an okay stop. I got one of those rewards cards, and we acquired three stamps on it immediately, out of seven needed to qualify for a free ice cream. Robert laughed at me for getting it stamped, but I figured that you never know—it was possible we’d work our way up to seven, after all, sometime in the next day! We also bought Raspberry Cordial and candy to bring back to Aunt Mary and Robert’s grandmother.
The
third Montgomery site was the house now known as Green Gables, a national park,
quite well-maintained and with an extended visitors’ center and barn exhibit
as well as the house itself. This was by far the most heavily trafficked site,
though I found the fact that the house was decorated to look like the house
describe in the Anne novels mildly annoying—it would have been more interesting
to see what it looked like as Montgomery herself knew it. After all, I already
imagined the house the way it was in the books!
A
short distance away from Green Gables was the Cavendish home, the site of L.M.
Montgomery’s grandparents’ house, where she lived for much of her
childhood and youth. (Tourist note: Get the combo pass for these two places
if you’re going to be going to both.) This would have been a lovely place
to walk around if it weren’t, at this point, absolutely pouring. We got
quite wet exploring the site and looking at the well, the foundation of the
house, and the lanes. I skipped the nearby graveyard, because a rubbing of Montgomery’s
grave would have been impossible to do in this weather, but it’s just
a block away and would make a great fifth stop on this tour.
We went back to the hotel to change and dry off, and then drove to the Landmark Cafe in Victoria, about half an hour from the hotel, for an Acadian meat pie, a quiche, a beet salad, a prime rib, and a roast salmon. It was a little, family-run place, quirkily decorated, and with excellent food. Really, though, I think the desserts were the best: we had coconut cake, rhubarb pie, blueberry pie, and apple pie, and the pastry was very flaky and the pies perfect all around. Back at the hotel, with the rain still coming down steadily, we played a few rounds of a make-your-own-headline game called “Man Bites Dog.” After a hand or two, we were improvising on the rules, adding a dealer’s choice option, and sometimes playing with one card face up. It’s a fun game—different than your typical word game or trivia game or strategy game—and we enjoyed it.
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Created: 8/28/07. Last Modified: 8/28/07.