Day 28: Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada - Rest Day 1

Day 28: Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada

July 10, 2016

Miles: 0


Today is my sister Dianne's birthday.  Happy birthday, Dine!  I had told myself to put this into the post,  but then forgot, hence the amendment.  This is what happens when you are perpetually fatigued.

Thank goodness today is a rest day because Di and I both woke up feeling pretty worn out.  I actually awoke at 7am and, like I always do when I wake up, I tried to guess the time.  I base my guess on how tired I feel and think about how much sleep I must have gotten to feel that way.  I'm usually pretty close with my guess, but this morning I guessed it was around 3am instead of the actual time of 7am.  I was glad I could roll over and go back to sleep.

I finally arose at 9am and Di got up a short time later.  The free breakfast at the Great George closes at 10am, so we had to make sure we got there by closing time.  The dining area of the Great George is set up more like a sitting room, but thankfully the chairs were far enough apart that one didn't feel compelled to make polite conversation with fellow lodgers.  One thing I don't like about bed and breakfasts and inns is the communal dining room where enthusiastic and sincere conversation is expected.  I find that environment uncomfortable under the best of circumstances, but to experience it before caffeine has had its chance to activate my brain's circuitry is torture.  Nothing ruins breakfast more than the extroverted stranger sitting next to you.

Di at breakfast with reasonable isolation from strangers

Breakfast was good.  Its hard for me to provide better granularity for food quality besides using the terms 'good' or 'bad' because that's really the way I've looked at food for a long time.  My computer programmer friends say my taste buds are binary because they are only capable of those two discriminations.  When Di and I first got together and she would cook for me I would pay her the highest compliment I could and say the food was good.  After a few meals where I had complimented her effusively by saying the food was good, she asked me why I thought it was only good.  I was confused.  Anyhow, I've learned from that experience and even though I still usually judge food as good or bad, I've learned that in some circumstances it is better to use the terms 'great' and 'bad'.  And, thanks to all the foodies in my life (you know who you are), I am actually learning to tell the difference between really great food and merely good food.

Good breakfast (great breakfast if Di made it)

Over breakfast we decided that we would stay in Charlottetown an additional day.  We thought another day of rest would be good for us and we wanted enough time to explore Charlottetown and some other parts of PEI.  Also, its hard to leave a hotel that offers great coffee, muffins and scones all day and provides unlimited chocolate cookies starting at 4pm.

It was chilly and overcast as we started our walk around downtown Charlottetown and although it wasn't yet raining, you could tell it would before long.  Right across the street from the hotel is a bronze sculpture of the first bishop of Charlottetown with his hand upraised to perform a benediction and I positioned Di for a photograph so it would look like she was being blessed. It didn't come out as intended.

Photobombed by the bishop

We decided to visit St. Dunstan's Basilica, which is a very ornate cathedral.

Spires built to impress

We read this placard

Nave built to impress

Altar built to impress

Everything about the church was impressive, except the depiction of St. Ambrose.  At first I thought the relief was for Stam Brose and I couldn't remember from my catechism lessons who that might be.  I guessed it might be the patron saint of grimaces, but I wasn't sure facial expressions warranted their own saints.  Eventually I figured out that it was St. Ambrose represented here, but why he is depicted with that grimace remains a mystery (unless he is unhappy his name wasn't fully spelled on one line).

Stam Brose (aka St. Ambrose)

Our hotel (aka the coffee and cookies place)

When the representatives of the colonies met in Charlottetown in 1864 to discuss confederation, which would be the creation of Canada, two of them were named John Hamilton Gray.  There were only 24 representatives, so the odds of two of them being identically named would be very small.  You would think this piece of information would normally only be an amusing footnote of history or the answer to a trivia question, but not in Charlottetown.  In Charlottetown it is worthy of a large bronze sculpture that imagines a conversation between the two John Hamilton Grays.  I think they must have a lot of bronze hanging around that they have to use up somethow.

Di chats it up with the Grays

We walked around the town a bit and then it started to rain, so we ducked into a cafe for more coffee and a bite to eat.

Second breakfast (fried egg over black beans and potatoes in a cast iron pot!)

I ordered my coffee with the infinite refill option and while on my third refill went outside for some fresh air.  That's where I met Michael, an islander since 1974, who stopped to chat with me.  "That's what we islanders do - we love to talk to people we haven't met before."  (At this point I had enough caffeine in me, so it was okay).

Meeting Michael outside the cafe

Michael eventually came into the cafe and sat with Di and me for over an hour.  We enjoyed talking with him because he was extremely knowledgeable about the island as well as a host of other things.  Why he had such a depth of knowledge on so many topics  became clear to us when he explained his job.  His job is to read three daily newspapers, two weekly newpapers, three daily radio broadcasts and three daily televised news programs and provide a daily synopsis of all this news to government officials.  Its possible we may have found the most informed person in all of Prince Edward Island!  As we parted from Michael he left us with a quote from a local historian: ""It's the god-given right of every Islander to know the business of every other Islander."  No secrets here, I guess.

Heading back to the hotel in the rain

Quality hotels offer endless supplies of coffee and desserts

We hung out in the sitting room for a little while and I spent some time browsing through a Dilbert book.  I told Di that it would be possible to teach her business management classes using only Dilbert comics as a textbook and showed her the strip below as proof of that.  

Sadly, there's a lot of truth in those Dilbert strips

Even Di found this amusing

Later this evening we went in search of Mussels.  I didn't know PEI was known for its mussels, but the references to this fact by Peggy and Beth clued me in.  Michael said he knew which restaurants served good mussels (of course) and we followed his recommendation to get them at Gahan's Pub.  And I have to say, they were good.

These huge bowls are just the appetizer size

We were stuffed after eating all those mussels, but even so, Di ate all her seafood Jumbalaya and I my seafood chowder. Both meals were not bad.

Forcing ourselves to eat more food and drink more beer

Tomorrow we are off to Green Gables, the home that inspired Anne of Green Gables.  How can I not go there now that I am immersed in the world of Anne Shirley?