“OH Canada…”
I’m back in London as the travels have come to an end for now, but I spent a fantastic week in PEI with Doug.
We both had to work, no rest for the wicked, so I cosied down in the local cafes that had free wi-fi, and spent the days working on articles and bits and pieces for the website. In the evenings Doug had a great line-up of places to go, events to partake in and people to see.
One night we went out to Lot 30, which we were both excited about because there was a write-up in the local paper about it and it sounded great. Lot 30 is one of those places where they only use seasonal foods so the menu changes almost daily according to what the chef can order fresh and locally. The physical menus slot in to their stylish holders to enable easy changing.
We were exploring this new culinary menu with some of Doug’s work colleagues and their better halves. It is a fine dining venue, very classy with huge wine glasses, plates that could act as trays and service not only with a smile, but every meal on our table of eight came out at once. That’s right, we had four waiters bring two dishes and lay them out at the same time. The cool thing was, I knew when to expect the meals, because I was sitting facing the big screen TV that is trained on the preparation bench in the kitchen. You cannot see the kitchen cook your meal, but each plate is laid out on the prep bench and each meal is put together in front of you. A flourish of the sling-back kitchen doors and it’s marching out to be placed right in front of you.
We began with these great cocktails for a bit of a fruity flavour, and then a really nice red wine to go with dinner – I had the pan-seared scallops to begin – soft and full of flavour served with beans and greens, the duck with this delicious sweet sauce as a main, with mashed potato pieces (funny looking but tasted good when dipped in the sauce) and a selection of vegetables, and then this apple strudel which was just delish!
Following Lot 30 we went down to Hunter’s, one of the local pubs, to see local musician Nathan Wiley play, but he didn’t come on until quite late so we stayed for the first set then took off.
We spent another night at Hunter’s too, where Andrew, Steff, Doug, and a few other friends and I partook in the weekly Thursday night ritual of Trivia Night! No really, it is as exciting as it sounds. And apart from the few questions that included “If you’re not from Canada or the US you won’t know this…” I had a ball and had a fair few suggestions to put in. It’s mostly entertainment trivia, hence movies, hence my forte, and included everything from Disney films to cult classics to the ever popular Simpsons or Family Guy questions.
The music ones I’m not so good at. But the guy who runs trivia, Newman, has a special “quarter question” where the winner gets a free beer, but everyone who wants to play that question has to toss a quarter (yes, Canadians have a 25cent coin) into a glass on your team’s table. He claims that as his ‘pay’ for the night, which is quite fair, and they are difficult questions so I reckon he would be making over ten dollars per table at least.
We also had sweet potato fries at Hunter’s, I think they do really good ones. For such a small place, the smallest of all Canada’s provinces, PEI has a huge amount of restaurants of all types, especially some really nice fine dining places. But we didn’t spend all our time at restaurants, we cooked a couple of nights. Jen and Drew came over, Jen’s the one who I met in June who’s first words when she heard me speak were “WHERE are you FROM?” It’s become an in-line hehe. And she kept those one-liners rolling along this time too. We had a great after dinner drink to warm us up – winter Pimms! Think that normal Pimms is great? Well, I got the winter pimms duty free and it’s a brandy base which you have with warm apple juice and a slice of fresh orange and apple. It warms the cockels of the heart. So good.
I can’t forget about The Office though. That’s right, the American spin-off of the hit British series about a group of office workers who deal in paper. But oh, there’s so much more to an office than that as Steve Carrell and his band of lackeys show us. Doug introduced me to The Office and now I’m hooked. It’s so funny – laugh out loud, roll around on the floor, and shake your head in disgust funny! Things will never be the same again. Staplers set in jelly, run for rabies events, naughty strippers and inter-office affairs. It’s got it all and coming into the fifth season they’re not running out of juice anytime soon. So we spent a few nights watching The Office.
We went to the movies and saw Burn After Reading, written and directed by the Cohen brothers who are responsible for movies like The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men and Oh Brother, Where Art Though? It was a hilarious film with Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Frances McDormand and John Malkovich all involved in affairs, deception, blackmail and murder to say the least. It was a very well-thought out script and confusion seemed to be the main part. It was also a bit too intelligent for the teeny boppers who were also in the theatre.
We also got out to the east side of the island. Brackley Beach and Charlottetown are pretty much in the central part of the island, and we took to east coastal drive up to St Peters for lunch, and walked out to the beach through one of the nature reserves and around one of the historic Victorian houses that looked more like a mansion.
We also spent the afternoon in Halifax, and Doug was showing me some of the places he went to when he went to uni there. My flight wasn’t till quarter to midnight, but got delayed because of hurricanes across Canada so we didn’t take off till quarter to one. I slept the whole way back. The stupid cheap airline closes down from November to February which really sucks. Hmm, back to work for now.
Tags: Travel
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