Canada 2012 Day 10

Today was a travel day. We slept OK in the train, Annie across two seats and I sitting like a pharaoh, but also woke up real early because sunrise is at 4 am around here! I wish I could say that we saw lots of the beautiful landscape after that, but the truth is that we dozed in and out of consciousness all the way to our final destination, Moncton.

Unfortunately our tent didn’t come out of the train when we got there, but the train staff were very helpful, located it in the train, and will send it to us in Charlottetown tomorrow by 5 pm. No point getting upset about such a small thing, but we will have another death ride tomorrow after we pick it up, because we will have to go 30 km north before we hit the campground we want (but that is a story for tomorrow).

An hour after detraining we got picked up by the bus that will take us to the east shore of the province of New Brunswick, across the Confederation Bridge, and into the capital of Prince Edward Island (aka PEI), Charlottetown. We enjoyed the ride (again dozing on and off), but are now nervous because (a) the island is a lot bigger than we had assumed, and (b) the landscape is dominated by rolling hills, which means that for every down there is a following up. We are much better at flat ground.

 
Once in Charlottetown we easily found the hostel, in which we had booked the last two beds. It is in a beautiful Victorian house with red gables, and happens to be booked out because an adventure travel company, Moose Travels, is staying here tonight and they have saturated the small hostel. Still, it is a very welcoming place, so we went and bought the makings of a salad with fruit trimmings, clam and lobster chowder (which I made with the “famous” PEI potatoes), and delicious fish filets. We found out, however, that the supermarkets in PEI do not carry wine, and you have to go to the province-owned liquor store to buy booze. So we went there, and were both shocked by the prices in alcoholic beverages. The cheapest bottle of wine is $9, the average is probably $18, and many are priced at $30 plus. It is hard to maintain vices here in Canada!