Ultimate Anne Tour and Charlottetown, PEI

Saturday, September 24, 2011
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada
Okay how do I go about describing today? It is hard as this was really the high point for Christina of the whole cruise. She tried hard not to have too great of expectations but after all the Anne movies and TV shows she has watched and loved over the years how could she not have some. Heck I have only read the first book and I had some given how vividly the area is brought to life in the book.

So how was it? It really was very very nice and I think we picked a good tour stopping at the Anne Museum and Anne of Green Gables House . The Anne Museum is on the McDonald Farm relatives of the L.M. Montgomery author of Anne of Greene Gables still live on. She was actually married in the living room of the house. We visited the home which was the museum, took a carriage ride and walked over to "Lake of Shinning Waters". It was well done and 'Anne' served us Raspberry Cordial, Matthew directed the carriage ride and while it could have been hokey I thought it was done well. Most of all so did Christina who was really enjoying herself.

We then went to the Anne of Green Gables house in the National Park near Cavenish. It is the actual house of Grand Aunt and Uncle of L.M. Montgomery's. This house from her journals was one of the inspirations in her novel for the Green Gables book. You can really see how that could be the case. With the 'haunted woods' near by and boy with the swampish land and the fog we had you can see how a child's or adult's imagination could populate it with all kinds of creatures. There was the barn where Matthew worked the farm from, the little room of Anne's, the big kitchen and all just as remembered from reading the book . If anything it was smaller than I imagined but as Christina said that's probably because movies and TV do tend to enlarge things. Again it was all well done preserving the farm and setting up the rooms similar to the book without overdoing it. Of course here and at the museum there was a gift shop but we spent little to no time there. We were here to live the Anne experience for a few minutes at least.

Christina wished she had more time but was glad she came and it showed her she really would like to spend some time here. As it was we briefly relived the book going into haunted woods, down lover's land and through the farmstead. Not enough but better than not coming at all.

We all decided that we could easily spend more time here also just like Quebec if we choose to make it happen who knows but it would be well worth a 3-4 day visit. Unfortunately you would have to pick the high season for tourism because even now the season is winding down and places are closed for the season. Yet I do think it would be worth the visit even if you did have more crowds. The solution for that? Go early or late miss the bus tours and do it on your own and still you usually can get away from most folks for at least a while.
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