Who wouldn’t want to visit a place called The Toy Factory? This started as a grandfather’s workshop in 1972 and continues to manufacture wooden toys that they sell as well as toys from other manufacturers. Not much in the way of toys for big kids like us.

While we’re on the subject of wood, our next stop was at the Fine Crafts Gallery of Gaudreau Fine Woodworking and the Susan Christensen Art Gallery (both at 46.40127N, 63.22302W). This gallery features not only wooden creations but also ceramics, quilting and other crafts from local artists.

The upper floor of the building has a woodworking shop and a gallery of Susan Christensen’s paintings and prints. We were lucky that Susan was there today and we had a long and interesting conversation on how she creates her paintings and mixes her paints. She only uses red, blue, yellow and white paint and mixes these colours to create any other colour she needs. Her images range from almost photo-realistic to much more abstract landscapes showcasing the beauty of PEI.

Before even driving onto PEI we saw “GOT SOAP?” billboards for the Great Canadian Soap Company. They make soap with goat’s milk and have an amazing variety of different soaps in pretty much any scent you can imagine. A lot of their soaps are 100% natural and some are 98% natural (some scents being artificial). Other products include shampoos, creams, lotions, etc. While most of the soaps have a scent testing sample, if you want to try the effectiveness of the soap, there is a sink in the back where you can see and feel how they lather and clean.

It was a beautiful sunny day and Brackley Beach was calling. This is a Parks Canada site and as we discovered last year on Vancouver Island, some Parks Canada staff don’t seem to be all that familiar with the permits they sell. Again today, we spent way more time than should be necessary to learn and decide what permit would be best for us. Once we got past the toll booth, the beach more than made up for the aggravation!

The beach is nice and sandy and the water was 20C and the waves were rolling and showed their white caps. We had so much fun swimming in the water!

Hungry, we stopped at the dock in Stanhope for dinner at Richard’s. A long line suggested that the wait, both in line and for food pickup would be worth it. Ruth had a delicious lobster roll while Martin stuck to the fish and chips. Both were really good and the views were beautiful from the upper deck of the restaurant.

After dinner we walked along the wharf and took in some of the sights.

The Parks Canada campground was full so we drove on to Charlottetown which we plan to explore tomorrow. Everything on the island is relatively close.

It was a grey and cool day today, great for doing a walking tour of Charlottetown. We found a van friendly parking spot near Founder’s Food Hall and Market and proceeded to explore the market. Two Beggars, a pet accessories shop, had a window to the outside and a bell where dogs could ring to get a treat. There was lots of dog activity!

A quick stop at the information centre gave us a map with various walking tours and made us aware of the Mayor’s opening BBQ outside. Free hotdogs, chips and drinks – why resist?

We started on the Waterfront Walk which took us by various shops, some with funny slogans, the yacht club, and then onto streets with beautiful historic houses.

The highlight of the day was The Cook’s Edge, a shop with a seemingly excessive number of mostly Japanese fine cooking knives with prices ranging from below $100 to over $3600 for a single knife. Marcel and his colleague Chase spent close to two hours enthusiastically showing us exquisitely made knives and teaching us about the blade geometries, sharpening techniques, types of steel and use of each of these tools and pieces of art. In the end, impulse buying got the better of us, and we left the store with a finely detailed knife capable of cutting potatoes tissue paper thin, and a fine ceramic honing rod to keep our new investment touched up. No electric sharpener for this one, Martin is going to need to use the water stones from the workshop that also keep chisels sharp.

Feeling slightly guilty, we stopped at St. Dunstan’s Basilica where a soloist and an organist were rehearsing. We spent quite a while listening to the singing and music while admiring this magnificent beautiful church.

Dinner was a pretzel, pint of beer and a pickle at the aptly named Pretzel, Pint and Pickle bar followed by a short walk back to our van.

It was a dark and rainy day…. We spent most of the day relaxing, cooking and catching up on our blog today. Late in the afternoon, the weather cleared up enough to go for a longer walk through the city seeing the diversity from modern business to small older houses. A downtown mall wasn’t doing so well and lots of the space was available for lease.

We came across PEI Photo Lab, a store selling mostly film cameras and film and offering film processing and printing. They do it all manually and are so busy that they have a 6-8 week waiting time for processing. We were told that it is largely the 18-25 and 55+ year olds that are getting back into film.

In the evening we walked along the waterfront again and watched the sun go down.

One of the advantages of travelling in a more unstructured way is that you can exchange tips with fellow travellers. We met a couple from Quebec and through broken French gave them some suggestions on what to see based on our experiences.

No map for today.