Tennyson could have been discussing Prince Edward Island, not Avalon. It is truly beautiful, with its distinctive red soil and green meadows falling down to the sea, and the city at its centre is Charlottetown, caught in time and thoroughly charming. As a traveler, you will be caught by Old Charlottetown’s core, its mid-19th century buildings that speak of a prosperous time of sailing ships and mercantilism. Here, much has been saved, apparently for our enjoyment. It will take you some time to exhaust Charlottetown’s supply of good restaurants and pubs.

Then there is the history in Province House, Founder’s Hall (Founders Hall), Beaconsfield, and St. Dunstan’s Basilica. There are the arts in the Confederation Center, both live theatre (for tickets and schedules, go to Confederation Centre) and an art gallery. And there is shopping: across from Province House is the cleverly concealed Confederation Court Mall with 90 businesses, many of them independent stores that offer a considerably more exotic offerings than one would expect to find in this small provincial capital. There are also specialty shops along Queen Street and Victoria Row, and for the more mundane, there is the Charlottetown Mall on University Avenue near the edge of the city.

Quick Tips:

In summertime, be sure to go down to Peake’s Quay, on the waterfront behind the Delta Prince Edward. It contains a number of shops and places for lunch (a seasonal operation).

The island is obviously tourist driven, and so there are great materials available. You can access information about the island at PEI Play or phone 888/PEI-PLAY. If you are coming to the island by the bridge, be sure to stop at the tourist office in Gateway Village. Otherwise, in Charlottetown, you will find the tourist bureau on Water Street (on the waterfront). For more on Charlottetown, go to Charlottetown, where there is an excellent brochure that you can order or download.

Best Way To Get Around:

It’s an older motel property that once had exterior corridors, but the property has seen considerable renovation over the years, as the exterior corridors are glassed in and the original building has been enlarged. When it came time to really expand, a large annex was build across the street and linked to the original property by a pedestrian tunnel under the street, which was well done. As a consequence of modernization, you will find many things that one would expect: there is a good-sized indoor pool, a sauna, an exercise room, an attractive, and a little restaurant downstairs, as well as a pub (MacLauchlan’s Pub and Eatery).

We were in the annex across the street, and the rooms were typical motel rooms: two double beds, television, clock radio, a table with two chairs, a closet that had an iron and ironing board, a coffeemaker, and a complete bathroom. As a typical motel room, it had the same dreary colour scheme and bedspreads that one will find in countless such rooms across North America. But you are in Charlottetown, and we hope that you won’t spend more time in the room than you have to.

The July rate for the room I just described is about C$145. I find that a bit pricey for this property, but I guess it’s all about the location. It is a good one, and Charlottetown gets expensive in summer, as a lot of people want to experience the restaurants and the theatre. The highways are often alive with buses full of Japanese tourists who come for the Anne of Green Gables tour, and the one thing they all have in common is the need for a clean place to stay.

The restaurant is a long room with a wood floor, a fireplace, exposed brick, blonde wood wainscoting, and nicely set tables. There is also some nice frosted glass, muted lighting, and Irish music playing faintly in the background. It isn’t particularly large, but the colour palette combined with friendly service makes it a very pleasant place.

It is possible to get through a meal here at a reasonable price. Specials during the week include a Thursday seafood medley in puff pastry at $20, Friday’s prime rib with Yorkshire pudding at $20, and Saturday’s bacon-wrapped scallops at $19. As attracted to the prime rib as I was, we both chose the rack of lamb at $24, and I really have no regrets. It was absolutely fantastic in taste and excellent in presentation. The vegetables and potatoes were creatively cooked and arranged as well. To see the whole menu, go to the website at Claddagh and Pub. You will be tempted.

The menu is rounded out by a good wine list that features reasonable prices. Our Australian Shiraz Cabernet was $27. Pre-dinner drinks were expensive at about $7, and after dinner, there is a selection of cheesecakes, special coffees, and Scottish malt whiskeys.

After dinner, you may be tempted to go upstairs to the Olde Dublin Pub. I recommend it. It is considerably larger than the room downstairs and features blonde woods, green table tops and carpeting, a bit of brick, and a covered, outdoor smoking patio. There is entertainment during the weekends (nightly in summer). We saw a Celtic band called The Boys in the Kitchen, and the place was rockin’. You could get all this by going to Ireland, but in many places there, you wouldn’t be able to find your Guinness through the fog of cigarette smoke.

This was a friendly bar (the waitresses have been trained to refer to you as darlin’) with lots of young people who enjoyed this brand of music (who doesn’t?), and it’s not often when a band sings Stan Roger’s, "I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier, I’m the last of Barrett’s privateers" that the whole crowd sings along. The combination of restaurant and pub made for a great evening. Try it out.

It operates as a traditional pub on one side, all dark wood, massive bar, and taps, with a really attractive room. On the other side is a restaurant featuring a combination of table and booth seating. It is a relatively small room, its most noticeable features being its high, beamed ceiling and Victorian store windows looking out into the street. The feel is extremely pleasant, with muted colours and walls hung with water colours and prints.

You are offered two menus, a pub menu with fairly simple fare, fish-and-chips, pub steak, chicken, etc., and a dinner menu that contains some tempting offerings, including rack of lamb, scallops, salmon, and chicken. You can see both menus and the wine list at The Merchantman. We opted for the special of the day, medallions of Black Angus beef tenderloin with grape blue cheese cream sauce, and it was absolutely delicious. We started with Caesar salads that were very good, and my wife ended with a Caramilk cheesecake that was out-of-this-world (so she says), and I finished with a Spanish coffee that was excellent as well.

The presentation was very nice, and frankly, the whole restaurant experience was enjoyable. It is odd that in a restaurant that does the food so well that they don’t cover the other bases: there are paper serviettes for example, and the butter comes in the little commercial plastic containers. Only a single fork is offered, and the waitress neglected to start the wine. But those were small things, perhaps the reason that this restaurant only receives two diamonds from AAA. Otherwise, it’s a great choice for an evening out.

It is still the seat of the island’s provincial government, but of course, it earned its place in history in 1864, when delegations from Upper and Lower Canada arrived on the steamship Queen Victoria to join with representatives of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The latter three had gathered to discuss maritime union, but that was put aside until the arrival of John A. Macdonald and George Etienne Cartier. In a flurry of eating, drinking, and dancing that was punctuated with meetings, the basic ideas on which Canada rests were established. No documents were written up and signed, but the design of a nation had been drawn.

As a visitor, you will really want to see the movie, A Great Dream, which lasts about 17 minutes. It should be required viewing for every Canadian, as it tells the story of 1864 and of the ideals that were established at that time and why it had to be done. Our American neighbours might appreciate that they, through their militarization and expansion, actually provided the impetus. Following the movie, you will be taken upstairs, where you can see the Confederation Chamber, the room in which the discussions of 1864 took place and which contains the furnishings used at the time. It is as one would expect, a bright room with a long table running its length. It has a high ceiling below which there is a viewing gallery.

Passing down the hall, you will be able to look into the clerk’s office and the library. The latter is a substantial and inviting room, a room used by the island’s politicians, lawyers, and justices, and a room that appears to have been caught in time, in another time. Down the hall, opposite the Confederation Chamber, is the Legislative Assembly room. It has been used since the opening of the building and now contains the 27 desks of the elected representatives of the people of the island, the smallest of the provincial legislatures.

On a bright, sunny day in summer, you might be able to take in performances by the Confederation Players or wander about the grounds. It is steeped in history and worth the visit, and there is no charge. Enjoy!

The art gallery features several large spaces on two levels linked by stairs and an elevator, each appropriate to a different display. The exhibit upstairs by artist Marlene Creates left me with the feeling I often get when I am looking at modern art. A photographer, she started by photographing a Newfoundland stream and then took it one step further. She submerged an underwater camera in the stream to take her own portrait. Calling the series of photographs, "Water Flowing to the Sea Captured at the Speed of Light," she writes, "I am staying in one place and the living world in my immediate surroundings is flowing past me." I admit, I would not have thought of that, but the explanation did cause me to reflect.

The spaces of this gallery are themselves wonderful and beautifully lit, both by natural and artificial light. Another exhibit from the gallery’s collection was called, "Real Retro – 1960’s," abstracts that included a number of significant works that reminded me that you can’t go back. I would have liked to have taken Carol Fraser’s, "Abandoned Cemetery," home with me, but not much else, as not much in my living space would go with the angles and fluorescent colours of the period.

One of the lower galleries featured an evolving display called, "The Days of Our Lives." Works are deleted and added to the display over time to reflect the constant flux in which we find ourselves. The display allows the curators to show off parts of the gallery’s extensive collection.

The center also contains the city’s library, a nice little bistro named Mavor’s, and an extraordinarily nice gift shop. The shop, called The Showcase, features works of Maritime art (oils and watercolours), as well as pottery, textiles, and glasswork. The range of souvenirs or gifts is well above the ordinary tourist shop, and the prices are fair. If you’re looking for that one "object" to take home as a memory of your island visit, this may be the place to find it.

This microbrewery refers to itself as "the Brewers of Handcrafted Ales," which are 100% natural and contain no preservatives. There are six offerings: Harvest Gold, Sir John A’s Honey Wheat Ale, Island Red Amber, Cole’s Cream Ale (Cole was an early island brewer), Iron Horse Brown, and Sydney Street Stout. After carefully sampling the second, fifth, and sixth in the list, I would have to say that they really have a source of pride. An English pint sells for C$5, but you can take it away in a 64-ounce brown bottle called a growler (and which is a real deal if you return the bottle for refund).

But wait a minute, there are other things of which they can be proud. It’s a great place for lunch or a moderately priced dinner. The menu features appetizers, salads, stir-fry, entrées (chicken, steak, and salmon dishes for the most part), and a selection of pastas and pizzas. Now, I have to say that, over the period of a 2-night trip, I visited the pub three times. So we tried the steak-and-cheese wrap, a veggie wrap, the "famous" brown-bag fish and chips, and some finger foods, and they were all really good. I enjoyed every bite. Dining selections range far from the mundane. The specials on one visit included a lemon pepper scallop fettuccini at C$9 – now, that did sound interesting, as do many of their offerings. You might also notice the linen napkins and heavy cutlery. They are doing this really well.

How about the atmosphere? You’ll like it. The front part of the restaurant is a pub that features dark wood, brick details, frosted glass, and tables in three Victorian window alcoves, a great place for lunch. The back is a restaurant with well-stuffed furniture. A patio is available in the summer. Add to that quick, friendly service and this is a good place to pass time. In the summer, brewery tours are offered. The brewery is in the basement (as are the washrooms). It supplies a number of restaurants on the island, most of which are members of the same management group. In a town that features a lot of exceptional eating and drinking possibilities, the Gahan pub stands out. Drop in and enjoy!

The home passed to Henry Cundhill and his sisters, who would live there for 30 years. When Cundhill died, he left the house as a "refuge and temporary home for friendless young women working in Charlottetown or attending Prince of Wales College." It would later become a residence for student nurses, and in 1970, it passed to the Prince Edward Island Heritage Foundation.

It has been recently restored with William Morris wallpapers true to the 1870s and furniture from the collection of the Museum of Prince Edward Island. The original moldings, hardware, and tile floors are intact. It is a wonderful whole. The fireplaces are also intact. There are eight in the house, the two in the large double parlour are marble and others are slate that has been faux-painted to resemble marble. The hallway floors are from the Minton tile works, but as I said, for the most part, this isn’t truly the house that Peake walked away from, it is a representation.

The visit today (donations are appreciated in winter, and summer admission is $4.25 per adult) is a combination explanation, tour, and self guiding, and we learned a lot. You will see the double parlour; and the sitting or reception room, which is now the building’s office; the dining room, and the kitchens. Upstairs there are four bedrooms and a nursery. Complementing the furniture of the period are manikins in period dress. You will not see the servants’ quarters on the third floor, nor will you be able to ascend to the belvedere on the roof, but I have no doubt that you will enjoy your time here. The house echoes the elegance and material comfort of the wealthy classes of a bygone age.

In summer, you can cross the street to visit the rambling white mansion that is the residence of the lieutenant governor. Tours are offered there through the week.

Entry to the triple nave is through a small narthex. Once inside, you will be impressed by the use of marble. The columns, in particular, are massive, and there can’t be many churches in Canada that can equal it. It isn’t a huge church, 271 feet long and 90 feet wide, but it is beautiful. The stained glass before the transept is modern and celebrates clergy who have served in the church, as well as the sacraments. The upper glass is frosted white glass. There are lovely marble chapels at each end of the transept and at the ends of the broad side aisles, four in all. The main altar soars 37 feet, a satisfactory marble lacework featuring the saints and surmounted by a large German rose window. On the sides of the chancel are beautifully carved wooden stalls surmounted by marble columns.

I think the visitor will be really impressed by the ribs of the ceiling: the intricate tracery of support features bosses that symbolize the allied nations at the time of the church’s construction during World War I. Other bosses celebrate the island, St. Dunstan, and faith, hope, and charity. I can’t say that I’ve seen a church this fine in this part of the world. It is really worth a visit.