Maritime Adventure - Part Six

After a $5 greasy spoon breaky at a small diner in Charlottetown, we hopped in the car and made our way north towards Cavandish. After all, when visiting PEI you can't miss out on Anne of Green Gables!!

It's a beautiful drive... picturesque with many farms and later lots of cottages and seaside camping areas, etc. The weather this day was a bit grey but still warm and lovely. We regret that we didn't bring our swimsuits (or towels....lol...or a blanket for that matter) and didn't take the time to actually stop at the beach. But hey, you can't do everything!!

We did stop at Green Gables Heritage Site though. It's a National Historic Site....the site of the house that L.M. Montgomery used as her inspiration for Anne of Green Gables. The house itself has been turned into a museum, and the property is open for walks, picnics, etc. Lover's Lane wasn't much more than a quick walk through the woods, but following the trail through the Haunted Woods was a good bit of exercise. It also led to the ruins of the old schoolhouse, the property still maintained and lived on by Montgomery's family, the bookstore (where we of course purchased an "official" copy of the book) and the graveyard where Montgomery is buried. All in all, an interesting way to spend a few hours.

Up the road, there is Avonlea.... a village created based on the fictional Avonlea from the books. We stopped by to check it out, but it was $22/person to get in and we just didn't see the point. If we had kids, it would be an excellent place to spend a day with the family.

Instead, we carried on down the highway towards Burlington. DBF had heard about an old military dude that had returned from WWI and built scale replicas of castles and such. We figured it would be an interesting oddball thing to check out. After a few turns down some long and windy country "highways" we arrived at Woodleigh Replicas.

This turned out to be a pretty cool stop! This guy returned from war with the idea of recreating some of the beauty he found in Scotland and Britain. There are about 30 replicas of castles, churches, gardens, and monuments....all built to scale. Most impressive to me was the recreation of the Tower of London, complete with replicas of the Crown Jewels! It took him 5 years to build, but the resemblance is absolutely amazing!

By the time we finished up here, the weather was turning very grey so we decided to just head on to Summerside. When we got to town the rain had started so we just went for a quick drive through town and found a hotel. We had seen advertising for a play along our journeys so decided that's what we would do for the evening since being outside wasn't in the cards. The restaurant next to our hotel, Brothers Two, offered a dinner theatre but we opted to just eat and head to the play instead. Here, I finally got to try a Lobster Roll (hey, guess what, it's lobster and mayo on a bun!)....it was yummy, but I think I'll pass on the $14 sammiches in the future. DBF tried some deep fried scallops, but the batter didn't do it for him.....something about crunchy and squishy that just didn't work.

After dinner, we made a mad dash for the theatre to see "Anne & Gilbert, the Musical"! Summerside has a great new theatre and all of the seats are good. Tickets were overpriced, but what do you expect from a major tourist attraction?!! (see next post for review)

The weather proceeded to get much worse, so after the play it was just back to the hotel for us. Overnight there was a huge wind and rain storm. When we got up in the morning the whole city had lost power....so we showered in the dark and I was putting make-up on by the light of the window. For breaky we had to settle for a pit-stop at a Timmy's as they seemed to be the only place in town with power..... then we hit the road back for Halifax.