More adventures in PEI

In addition to our beach adventures in PEI, we also visited the Anne of Green Gables house, which is definitely a total tourist trap, but fun to see for those of us raised on Anne of Green Gables books, movies, and TV shows (Road to Avonlea, anyone?)  We didn't stay very long. Just long enough to check out the house:

Drink some Raspberry Cordial

And turn dad into our personal rickshaw driver

I also got to fulfill my life long dream of visiting the Cows factory on PEI.

And of course, PEI is all about the seafood. Particularly the mussels and the lobster. When we arrived back to the house where we were staying, our hosts had finished cooking up a giant pile of lobsters that were fresh caught that day.

Having never seen an entire lobster up close and personal before, I had to inspect them closer.

And closer...

And I concluded that they are ugly, creepy little bottom-dwellers. I do have a policy, however, that I will sample the local cuisine while traveling, so I had my first ever taste of lobster. The process of extracting the meat was long and laborious, but not as frustrating as my previous experience with crab. And the meat was good, mostly because it was saturated in garlic butter, but I don't see what all the fuss is about and why these freaky things are considered a delicacy. In fact, the Islanders we were staying with told us that when they were in school, lobster was the cuisine of the poor people on the Island. All the poor kids would be teased for bringing lobster sandwiches to school. I guess it is their rarity in other parts of the world that makes them so expensive everywhere else.

Cold and rainy

My blog updates have been much slower than I anticipated they would be this summer. have been writing a lot for work lately, so when I am not working, I am not so motivated to continue writing for fun. I have lots of pictures to post, though, so I will try to do that more regularly.

This is another picture of the day we went to the beach, IN JUNE, and it was freezing cold and raining. Somehow it doesn't look as miserable of the one of me by myself.

It also features my characteristic wink that I am seemingly unable to stop doing when there is even the slightest hint of brightness.....

Beaches, beeches

Okay, here we go. I have made a pledge to post at least once a week all summer. The theory is that if I get into the habit of posting regularly, it will become an actual habit.

Yesterday was the first day of summer, and although summer temperatures haven't quite come to New Brunswick yet, I figured I could try to conjure up some summer with a post about beaches. Because nothing says summer like "laying out" on a beach.  (The quotations are because laying out is grammatically incorrect, but it just sounds so much better than "lying out".)

So, my parents were just in town and we got to do some touring around the maritimes. And if there is anything the maritimes has in abundance, it is beaches! We went to beaches in both Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick.

Our first beach stop was in on the north shore of PEI, in the PEI National Park (map) or close to it. It was a cold and windy day, and right when we got to the beach, it started to rain. Definitely not beach weather. For some reason, I thought it was hilarious that it was JUNE and still so damn cold. I tried to take pictures of myself all bundled up, freezing to death on the beach IN JUNE to share with my American friends. Unfortunately, I am the world's worst self-portrait taker. I attribute this to my freakishly short, T-Rex-like arms. And the pictures weren't really capturing the freezing-ness of the situation.

Then my dad suggested that he just take the damn picture with his iPhone, which actually worked out quite well. You can definitely see how cold and dreary it was on the beach.

The beach itself was quite pretty, and I can imagine it would be delightful on a sunny day.

Two days later, however, we went to a different beach in New Brunswick, specifically Parlee Beach (map) in Shediac, and it was a glorious day!

Parlee Beach (previously coined the most un-fun beach) is on the Northumberland Strait, which boasts the "warmest waters north of the Carolinas" so Dad decided this was the place for him to have his first swim in the Atlantic Ocean.

Apparently, the brochures lied, and it was almost as cold as the Polar Bear Swim in the Pacific Ocean, so the "swim" was very brief due to the numbness of his feet.

I still have not swum in the Atlantic Ocean, but since I live here and could technically do it any time I want, I felt that there was no need for me to go in on this particular day. As I have been informed by a fellow Sackvillian, summer doesn't really come until the end of July. Maybe then it will be warm enough to actually justify going in the water.