Antigonish

Well the boys did find a Ceili and enjoyed some song and dance at the local Irish pub in Charlottetown, and closed the place down apparently while Karen and I enjoyed the Great George in slumber.  This boutique hotel pays a lot of attention to detail which just made us want to stay another night.  In hindsight, I should have merged Bathurst and Moncton together and maybe stayed in Miramichi in order to spend more time in PEI.  After a wonderful b’fast, we wandered around Charlottetown for a bit and enjoyed some of the historical attributes of the original town and harbour area.  Then we were off to Point Prim for lunch at the Chowder house.  We were able to get a table at this rustic seaside shack and were served some fabulous chowder, I had the Acadian Chowder which was manhattan style with an Acadian accent.  It was awesome, packed with shell fish and chorizo - very spicy.  Matthew had the Ultimate Chowder which was in the New England style, while Karen had fish tacos (delicious) and Myles panko crusted haddock.  We started with a pot of butter clams which mostly Matthew and I ate, avoiding the gritty siphons.  After lunch, we wandered out on the tidal flats in the red rock and inspected whatever creatures were hanging around, then over to the Point Prim lighthouse.  The time arrived to head for our reservation on the Northumberland Ferry to Nova Scotia, which was an uneventful crossing of a little over an hour.  Once in Nouvelle Ecosse, we made our way to Antigonish.  As we had been forewarned, this is a tiny little college town.  We checked in to one of the very few motels, which kind of surprised me because I had thought there would be lots of hotel rooms to accommodate visitors for graduation.  We learned that with an enrolment of only 5800, grad guests can be accomodated on campus.  We had a locavore dinner and craft beer at the Townhouse and spent a bit of time wandering around the campus.  I was struck by the complete absence of any form of security, all the buildings were open, with only a very few summer students and student athletes around.  Obviously a very safe environment for college, truly something uncommon these days.  With dusk having arrived, and not much left to see, we were ETB once more.