Day
4: Saturday, 8/25—PEIDay
4: Saturday, 8/25—PEI
Yes,
that’s what the small town of North Lake calls itself, and I was ready
for it to be true, so that’s where we headed off to in the fog (thankfully,
it wasn’t raining) when leaving the hotel after breakfast. Our first stop
en route, heading northeast out of Charlottetown, was a farm shop on Route 25.
We sampled some fudge, bought some homemade cookies and native blueberries,
and admired the goats’ neat-looking play yard (“It’s a hamster
wheel for goats,” Robert said, and while I didn’t actually see a
wheel per se, that was certainly true in spirit).
Driving north we admired the farmland, the many cows near the road, and yet the proximity to water, to red sandstone cliffs and to the ocean. We decided that in feel, PEI was most like Pennsylvania Dutch country mixed with Cape Cod. We only saw another car very occasionally, and it was Saturday—one would think perhaps the busiest tourism day. After a walk out onto a random harbor just to stretch our legs, we arrived in North Lake.
Tuna everywhere, as far as the eye could see? Not quite. For one thing, we later found out that tuna is essentially never eaten on the island—all of the tuna caught goes off-island, which seems a giant shame to us. Why doesn’t some enterprising person open up a nice sushi place here? For another thing, though we found the tuna viewing platform easily enough, and we could look down at both sides of the harbor, the area was completely deserted, very still, and utterly silent. Eventually Robert found a fisherman who was doing something in a shed. He explained that they’d been fishing, but had stopped two weeks ago because tuna prices were currently so low ($2 a pound, he said—miraculously low, it seemed to me, especially given all the alarmist we’ll-run-out-of-tuna-and-what-will-sushi-bars-do-then articles we’d been reading lately) that it wasn’t profitable for them to pay for gas and bait even to fish. They were going to start back up in another few weeks, he said, but alas, that would be too late for us.
Still, I was really disappointed, though: if they had to stop fishing, then they had to stop fishing. That’s fine. Being a future subsistence fisherwoman from Alaska, I understand such things. That wasn’t the problem. But really, what is wrong with this town? Why couldn’t they afford one lousy sign, so I could take my picture truly in front of a banner proclaiming their not-modest nickname? No sign anywhere, and that was what I found disappointing. The viewing platform was nice enough, with some things to read on tuna anatomy, but it was no substitute for a sign.
At East Point we walked around the rocks at the edge of the cliffs and explored the bottom of the lighthouse. Further on, at Basin Head, we took a nice walk on the beach and watched crazy tourists (“They must be from Ottawa,” Robert said) jumping into a small channel of very fast-moving, sixteen-degree water from a bridge. It looked incredibly dangerous—even to Robert, who is far less risk-averse than I am. We had a good lunch of poutine and fried scallops from the snack stand on the dock. The poutine gravy was very peppery, some of the best gravy I’ve had on this dish, and though the cheese was actually shredded white cheddar instead of curds (heresy!) it was still a very good dish. We didn’t have it, but the “fries with works” also sounded good, and sort of like a Canadian loco moco: fries with chop meat, gravy, and peas (though the man said he would substitute cheese for peas if we wanted).
The
fog had dissipated completely by now, and it was much warmer and becoming a
nice day, so we drove down to Souris in the sun and then cut over, southwest
and inland, heading back to Charlottetown. We stopped at a farm stand for some
peaches and then at a Sobey’s, a Canadian supermarket chain whose name
does indeed sound foreign to us, where we bought presents to bring back to friends:
Kinder Eggs, Eat More candy bars (who could pass up that name?), Canadian Coke
(made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup) in glass bottles the size of wine
bottles, and lobster-flavored potato chips. Don’t ask. I’ve had
better rancid nuts.
At
this point, we started exploring Charlottetown itself, the island’s biggest
town. We took advantage of the hour of free parking
in the lot behind Founders’ Hall, and we bought the combo Hall-Sandland
tickets. Sandland, an annual sculpture park built entirely from island sand
in lovely shades of red, was great. We caught most of a demonstration from a
sand sculptor, and both Robert and I lamented that our childhood was spent building
castles with such little detail and with such poor technique. Why hadn’t
our parents taught us better?
In Founders’ Hall, we learned all about the history of Canada, about its beginnings as a Confederation, and about the role of PEI in that process. I listened to the tour in French, since there were wireless bilingual headsets, and not only learned some more French, but also lots of interesting details. For example, neither Robert nor I had known that Canada reorganized and set aside a new province just in 1999. So recently? Where were we? This was apparently our day of realizing that we still had lots left to learn.
After
a nap back at the hotel, we returned to the main Charlottetown area for dinner
at Flex Mussels, which despite the cutesy name was truly a top-notch restaurant,
with good service, a friendly staff, a nice setting on the wharf, a good view,
and excellent, excellent mussels. Plus, it stays open until midnight—that
on an island where nearly every other restaurant stops serving at eight and
where even ice cream shops, on the heavily trafficked tourist area, close by
9:00. We had Bombay mussels, steamed in a curried mango sauce, which were the
best mussels I’ve ever eaten, and a mussel corn chowder, which was smooth
and soft and deliciously rounded in flavor. We also had fried oysters with two
good sauces 
and
Peking mussels, with shredded duck, which were very good but a bit more ordinary,
actually, in flavor. The grilled corn on the cob and the sautéed sugar
snap peas were only okay, but the fish and chips was possibly the best dish
by that name I’d ever had: half the fish was salmon, though, so of course
I’d feel that way. Deep-fried salmon is so rare! The chips were wonderful,
too, nicely done and Belgian-y, served with a very good house-made tartar sauce
dip. The lobster rolls were also very good—we tried the tempura-fried
lobster in the rolls, with pesto or tomato mayo.
Dessert was a block away at the only place still open—the now-ubiquitous Cows ice cream. Sadly, I had left my already-stamped card home, because I knew Robert thought I was crazy to have gotten it at all. After ice cream and more Man Bites Dog, we slept well on our last night in PEI.
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Created: 8/28/07. Last Modified: 8/28/07.