Thursday was Our Anne Day in PEI

Ahh, Friday night, how I love thee. My beloved weekend is here.

Still working through the adventures of last week in PEI. Thursday was the big day, the day for Anne, who led us to the Island in the first place (in 1985, whew, what a long time ago).

Of course, we started at the mother ship, Green Gables.


We go every time. They've done more to the place every time, movies and artifacts and so on, but the essentials stay the same.


The typewriter, for instance.


Not everything is beautiful or meaningful, of course.


What, you haven't seen a turkey-in-an-Anne-wig lollipop holder before?
(No, I don't get that, either.)

Still, there's honeysuckle growing on the house.

And the usual old house/museum artifacts inside.

I can't quite picture using this stove.

Spinning!

Reminds me of my great-grandmother's sewing machine, which my mother still has.

Knitting! And a swift, even!

There's a beautiful walking path in the woods, which I highly recommend.

The woods and brook are wonderful.

And my mother commented how nice it was that they didn't try to pretty it up. It's a real woods. Things happen.

Photos can't capture how wonderful it smelled. I took this picture to remember to tell you, it was marvelous.

It wasn't cold, but summer was definitely on its way out.

See the little chippie "hiding" behind the fern? He must have been a young one, who needed to learn that running away from, not closer to the big scaries is the better tactic.

We also saw a small squirrel. I don't know if he was young, too, or just a smaller variety than we have around here.

We noticed these trees all over the Island. Mountain ash, my mother said.

The dew had landed heavily, to be lingering late morning.

At the time, I didn't want to know if this was more dew, or some kind of ... oozing. I'm kind of curious now, though.

We also walked through the haunted wood to the site of LMM's grandparents' home. I wouldn't say it wasn't worth doing, but it was kind of a long walk, and turned out to be a site we'd seen before and didn't really feel the need to see again. Live and learn. Should be seen once, I think, but if you don't feel like a longish walk, drive over.

We walked back via the cemetery where LMM is buried. I noticed this unusual stone as well. Do you suppose he was a lumberjack, or merely liked trees?


For lunch, we went to the PEI Preserve Company and ate at their Cafe on the Clyde. This is the front of the menu:

I share their sensibility. I did have a sandwich, in fact, and it was good, but then I had this:

Mmmm.

If you go there, don't forget to look up; interesting light fixtures and quilts on display.

And art in the garden, as well.

After lunch, it was time for a return visit to the LMM Birthplace, which is in New London, and then on to Park Corner to the Anne Museum, which is in the house that her cousins lived in, and was where she got married. Both places that we'd been before, and were happy to go again. We're funny that way.

Perhaps by now, you are done with the "isn't PEI pretty?" pictures, but I am not. Most emphatically.

This barn color was just wrong, though. Red, yes; persimmon, no.
Just say no to painting your barn persimmon!

Still, red roads make up for a lot with me.

Back in Charlottetown for dinner (good pizza at Castello's, by the Confederation Centre), and I saw this on a car as we walked over to Cows for dessert. It had a PEI plate on the back; I suggested that it could be a friend or relative of Adam McQuaid's, and my mother pointed out that it could actually be his!


It is nice, as a hockey fan visiting Canada, to have hockey references be so much more common. Though I also saw at least two Red Sox shirts that week; they're everywhere. But at Cows, there was this flavor (and wait until you see the shirt I got there):


And in the liquor store, the Red Sox were absent, while I learned that Wayne Gretzky has put his name to wine.


So that was Thursday. Now I'm off to dream of visiting the Hockey Hall of Fame. Have you been to Toronto?

PS Happy birthday, my brother!