Last Day of Tour

We headed south on route 3 with a morning stop at Camden, a lovely little town right on the water and several large sailing ketches in dry dock and shrink-wrapped in plastic against the approaching winter. Route 3 runs near the water for most of the way, next stop Rockland and a visit to the Farnsworth Art Gallery where there are many paintings by Andrew Wyeth: David and I have had a print of his "Geraniums" in our bedroom for ages - so long that the geranium faded to pale pink and David touched it up with darker paint. So it was nice to visit the original and check out the real colour.

Our destination was Freeport Maine which is an outlet town and a last chance for some shopping at outlet prices - couldn't resist buying a Coach bag and a few odds and ends.

Merryle hosted a cocktail party at the hotel for all us passengers and a final dinner. Gordon spoke a few words - correction - many words of appreciation for Merryle and Vanessa's efforts during the trip and finished off with a spirited rendition of "I Love a Sunburnt Country". He has been a source of great amusement during the trip telling stories too long for a blog.

In the hotel room is a copy of the Maine state song:

Day of Rest - Worn Out!

We skipped the hotel breakfast this morning and went off to the 2cats which I found highly recornmended on TripAdvisor - breakfast from 7 am to 1pm and that's it for the day.

It was quite a walk from the hotel in bright sunny weather and we timed it just right because when we left 2cats there was a queue stretching down the path. Looking at the young age of everyone I would guess that they too looked it up on TripAdvisor - which shows how influential sites like TA are.

One if the cats showed himself, the other was on his break and we enjoyed the homemade granola with yoghurt and fruit. David wasn't mad on his pancakes but I loved the walnut cranberry muffin, fresh from the oven.

On the way back along Cottage Street I spotted Bee's yarn shop and of course made a bee-line for it while David kept on walking. The owner, Debbie and I had a lovely chat and she sold me more sock yarn which I'm looking forward to.

More walking around the streets where we continually met members of our group shopping and sightseeing. There was another cruise ship in the harbor and the shops were crawling with them By the time we'd done the shore walk past the millionaires' so-called cottages we were worn out and ready for a rest before dinner.

Last food description and our farewell dinner with Anne, Bill and Sue was fabulous!! We went to the Reading Room, chosen by a combination of name and TripAdvisor, and situated in Bar Harbor Inn on a headland overlooking the harbour - practically IN the harbour.

Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine

Two cruise ships hit town this morning and 5000 extra people appeared on the streets so it was a good day for us to go to Acadia National Park with our native guide in his bus - tour coaches like ours are too big for the roads.

The Rockefellers are great benefactors of this park, donating much of the land and having personal involvement in the running. John D the second decreed that no automobiles be allowed on carriage roads which holds true to today - and we benefited from that decree this afternoon.

In the morning we drove around the meadow and looked at the wild plant gardens which were established by the local Garden Club, a worthy cause, and a huge amount of work. The cruise ships had commandeered every bus in the area and they were all at Thunder Hole on the coast waiting for it to thunder (usually more of a whisper according to our guide).

Then a stiff climb in the bus up Cadillac Mountain to look out over Bar Harbor and see the two cruise ships sitting innocently out in the bay. It was freezing up there with an icy wind blowing and I hated it - was very happy to come back down to Jordan Pond House Restaurant for lunch pre-ordered by Merryle.

This is the best lunch yet! We had a private dining room and the owner as waiter who explained there has been a restaurant on this site for one hundred years and they still serve the same specialties. Bring it on! They are real lemonade, unsweetened with simple syrup in jugs if you like it sweeter, seafood chowder and popovers. Popovers are a revelation: they're simply Yorkshire pudding batter cooked in muffin tins so they pop up and fall over; they're served hot from the oven and you plunge a knife into its heart, add butter and strawberry jam, shake it and eat. I am ashamed to say everyone at our table ate two - and that was before the seafood chowder, the crabcakes, salad and ham and cheese paninis. Not to mention the homemade real vanilla ice-cream with wild blueberry sauce.

The poor horses had to carry all that on our two hour carriage ride. This was a special treat for the last day and what a delight it was to sit back in the carriage and let our two French percherons driven by Emily carry us up the hill on gradual slopes. Emily is a funny and informative guide and she handled Pete and Gub with skill and obvious love. Pete has had one eye removed and experimental surgery on his other eye so it's touch and go for him but he and his brother didn't skip a beat hauling us up that mountain and seemed to enjoy their work.

It was lovely to slowly and quietly drive under the trees and see at close quarters how the trees cling to the rocks with little shrubs and mosses around their trunks and gaze out at the sea - the cruise boats far in the distance and no cruisers within sight or sound.

Two hours passed too quickly and soon we were back saying goodbye to Pete and Gub and Emily.

David and I had a light dinner and an ice-cream cone: I was intrigued by maple bacon but after a sample settled for maple walnut - delicious - and $2 for 2 cones because they are closing next week.

A Gorgeous Garden and Maine USA

A piper was on hand to see us off from The Algonquin (heavily tipped by Merryle) and we drove to the nearby picturesque village of St Andrews by the Sea to cruise up and down the streets taking photos of the many churches - at least six which seems a lot for a town of 2000 full-time inhabitants. Then on to the Kingsbrae Horticultural Garden which has that name rather than 'Botanical' because it aims to be a garden to experience rather than a collection of named plants.

Bill and I experienced it by nicking off from the main group and starting at the bottom where we could have free rein without all the other keen photographers. What a fabulous garden! It's divided into rooms from formal parterres to conifer to blue flowers to eating, one called Sense and Sensitivity for the visually impaired featuring things like lambs ears and non-edible rhubarb (never heard of that before) and a fantastic children's garden where they are encouraged to play around and eat the exhibits.

Val and I found the statue garden, full of great art works and guarded by a ginger tom whom I was chasing when I got stuck in a bog - punishment: muddy shoes for the rest of the day (while ginger tom laughed from under a bush. )

The garden has a huge Friends of the Garden who volunteer as guides, weeders, diggers and morning tea providers for busloads of Australians. They were very proud to show us their Wollemi Pine, the first in Northern America, and usually kept in a cage but freed for us to see. Morning tea was pretty good- blueberry cake was excellent. This could be called the blueberry holiday as they are a recurring motif.

Back on the bus and heading to the Canadian / USA border with strict instructions from Merryle to toe the line and not try any jokes: these guys don't have a sense of humour unless they're making the jokes. It was more intensive than going through Los Angeles!! Third degree almost for some of us and Ross and Julie told they were illegal immigrants because a green stub had been left in their passports from a year ago. David and I were quick as we went through LA 15 days ago. It was a feeling of relief for all of us to get through the checkpoint and enter unscathed into the US.

Merryle was hard-put to find a lunch place and the only possible place, the Nook and Cranny Restaurant turned out to be a little gem. You wouldn't look twice as you drive past and 'restaurant' is a misnomer - more of a 'hole in the wall' - but they had the place decorated for fall, sandwiches on the table followed by homemade chicken soup and - SURPRISE - blueberry cobbler. Only one toilet, the last one before Bar Harbor.

One more stop for us photographers to get the fields of low-growing wild blueberries whose foliage covers the landscape in brilliant red. I took a photo of how we spread out and hog the roadside in our quest for photos.

The rest of the trip to Bar Harbor was on a beautiful back road through green fields and golden woods, past poor-looking farms which proved a huge contrast to the sumptuous rich houses of Bar Harbor along Millionaires' Row where our hotel, the Harborside is situated. We've all got seaview rooms overlooking the harbour, a special treat for the last nights.

Dinner tonight is a lobster dinner and a unanimous decision that Maine lobsters are sweeter and nicer than Canadian. I don't want to say that as I loved Canada but maybe it's only down to the style of cooking.

Fog and New Brunswick

PEI was shrouded in mist and fog as we left this morning, sorry to leave the lovely Great George and even sorrier to leave the island: we will be back!

We arrived by ferry and left by the marvellous Confederation Bridge but no matter which way you go it's free to come onto the island and they slug you when you leave - so peering out the bus window we could see the toll is $43.25 for a car and passenger and $7 for each additional passenger!

The Confederation Bridge was promised when PEI joined the other provinces in 1863 but building didn't start till 1993 after much controversy over whether it was necessary, would it change the island-ness and would it spoil the fishing. In the end the ayes won at 59.4% and building went ahead, taking ten years. It's 12.5 km long and 60 m high at its highest span and curves in a gentle S to keep the drivers alert. (You can see I listen on the bus as I knit.)

We stopped at Cape Jurrimaine just over on the New Brunswick side for morning tea and a look at the nature centre there, which opened specially for us. The photo of the bridge looks a bit bleak - well it was bleak ...

We settled in for a day of driving to get to the Canada/US border: mile after mile of woods, evergreens interspersed with yellow birch and the occasional red burst from sugar maple and crimson purple of red maple.

Lunch was at a truck stop and here Merryle's carefully-laid plans came awry as our tables were occupied by the Canadian army who had turned up unannounced. The manager explained apologetically that they've taken such a beating lately in Afghanistan he couldn't turn them away. (But they weren't allowed to order dessert!)

On we pushed through the afternoon - fog and the industrial Saint John to finally arrive at St Andrews by the Sea, an old old town whose original inhabitants moved here, houses and all, from the USA at the time of the Revolution. Then the rich and famous discovered it in the early 1900s and built their 50-roomed summer "cottages" here and a hotel The Algonquin for overflow guests. It has been modernized and a new wing added which is where we are.

The Algonquin, in spite of - or perhaps because of - its poshness doesn't have free wi-fi so rather than pay them $15 I shall wait till tomorrow to post this.

Anne of Green Gables and the North Shore

Green Gables lies within a National Park so everything is very tasteful, except the gift shop. We arrived at the same time as a group of Japanese - since 1952 the book of A of GG by L M Montgomery has been on their school curriculum so every year 6000 Japanese women (and the odd male) make the pilgrimage to Cavendish to visit LMM's grave and the house. This group weren't wearing the red pigtails, hat, green dress and white pinafore as often happens.

Merryle gave us a masterly resume of the books and the whole Anne phenomenon so the blokes among us had no excuse for not participating.

The house has been beautifully restored and furnished to the period, the early 1900s with Matthew's clothes laid out on the bed and Anne's room just as described. Photo below of me at the front door of GG.

Lovers Lane is a delightful walk on an inviting trail through woods of deciduous trees and evergreens, crossing a bubbling brook and weaving around the trees - this took about 30 minutes and by the time we checked out the gift shop - disappointing, not as good as the one in Charlottetown - it was time to go. The Haunted Woods will have to wait till next time.

Then we drove to the shore where the pink sand and bright red cliffs make a fascinating contrast to the pale flat sea. It was overcast today and no wind - still unusual weather for here.

Lunch was meant to be at a 60 feet salad bar but it had closed for the season so - what a shame - we had to have lobster instead. We all had to wear lobster bibs but the photo of David wearing his bib and attacking his lobster has been censored. That's my lobster in the photo. The restaurant closed tomorrow till next year so we were lucky to get in.

A few more lighthouses and the ultimate gift shop - 3 stories of fabulous STUFF all with 30% off because it's the end of the season - but how can you carry it?

No-one wanted dinner but we all like the Great George's happy hour with free wine and cookies - we'll be sorry to leave here tomorrow.

Free Time in Charlottetown

A local tour guide came on the bus with us for a quick introductory look at Charlottetown, but it's a compact city of 30,000 people laid out logically on a grid so we could probably have done without him. We ended up at Government House for a look at the gardens and what most people liked the best were the chipmunks scampering up and down the trees. The bus driver thinks they're pests and that we are all deranged for finding chipmunks intriguing.

We wandered the city in company with the passengers of two cruise ships so it was shoulder to shoulder in the Anne of Green Gables Shop, a place to get out of quickly, and anyway we are going to Anne country tomorrow and the cruise shops will be gone.

It was nice not to be a cruiser and to belong (temporarily) to The Great George which is a fun hotel.
It's the red building photograph below.
Breakfast is served in the lounge sitting around on couches.

Back on the bus for an afternoon trip south to a little village called Victoria by the Sea which is normally closed at this time of the year, but Merryle persuaded several of the businesses to open for the mad Australians. Some of us were mad to see beautiful covetable antiques and no possibility of shipping them home.

Island Chocolates turned on a talk on chocolate by its young man chocolatier (he has a degree in it) and a slice each of chocolate tart for afternoon tea plus a little box of chocs each. (Except for the 3 guys who deserted us to go play golf - 30 golf courses in this tiny island!)

At one of the ubiquitous gift shops I tried on an Anne of Green Gables hat and pigtails - just getting into the swim of things for tomorrow. Picture below along with one labelled Beach House which was taken by accident but looks quite artistic. The lighthouse is a typical four-sided Maritimes edifice. The photos show what glorious weather we are having - a true Indian summer.

Also you can see what we all found interesting: unloading a ton of rock crabs at the jetty for the blokes and talking to a Maine Coon cat for the cat-lovers. He was a magnificent specimen and quite happy to pose for photos.

Free night for dinner and off we went to Sims Steak Restaurant with Anne, Bill and Sue. They didn't have a table for us but with a bit of swift talking ("we're from Australia, only here a few nights") we got in after a ten minute wait on a comfy couch. Good choice! It was fantastic! The funniest thing was as we ate our entrees of scallops, fish chowder and wedge lettuce salad we all practically purred with pleasure. Anne and I chose the wedge salad because it gets a good write-up on TripAdvisor - and deservedly so. However the chef wouldn't part with the recipe.

Main courses were good but rather an anticlimax after first course (and we were full as serves here are considerable. ) David disagrees: he says his 8 oz tenderloin is the best steak he has ever had - even better than the Barn.