Isles-de-la-Madeleine and back to PEI

This will be a double day blog again. It was so perfect on  Isles-de-la-Madeleine yesterday that sitting down to write the blog kind of slipped to the bottom of my list.

This island is absolutely gorgeous on a perfect sunny day. Such days are a rarity this time of year, so we savored the day as much as we could. The island reminds both of us a lot like Iceland. There is very little vegetation and it is windswept and green (remember: Iceland is green. Greenland is ice.). There are brightly painted colorful houses, all manner of boats (mostly fishing boats), also brightly painted and just as colorfully named, headlands, beaches, hills. It has a bit of everything.

Houses across and inlet from where we stayed

Boats waiting for work to be finished

A typical PEI lighthouse

Lobstermen returning to port with their daily catch

It was a real treat to ride the bike "naked," without the heavy bags

They love a big, well-tended lawn on Isle-de-la-Madeleine!

We rode around as much of the island that we cared to ride on our "day off." Fascinating place. Our best guess as to the population is maybe about 5,000. But that's just a guess. In the winter it is surely less, and in the summer it is pretty full of tourists. We visited a fromagerie, a herring smoke house, and a pasticerie. Of course we bought some cheese, smoked herring and some baked goodies. Yum.

The herring smoke houses

Pasticerie

Baked goodies to buy

The fromagerie

We even chanced by a well-stocked bike shop and stopped in to buy a few CO2 cartridges (US Homeland Security won't let them on the plane, even though FAA regulations say that 2 are OK if properly sized) and to use their floor pump.

We watched to evening ferry arrive in port and were amazed to watch the captain's skill at turning the huge ship around in tight quarters and then backing into position. When we came in the night before it was pretty windy and he used a tug to push the bow in. Not this time.

Parallel parking a 300 foot ship

For dinner we went back to the same restaurant that we went to last night. They have seal burgers on the menu and we were excited to try them. The locals say that seal is a hyper-local delicacy. They say that it is strong in the same way that venison can be gamey, but that we should try. We had just arrived and were about to order when the power went out -- the entire island had no power. Argh. The beer taps still worked, though, so we had a couple of beers. But it was soon evident that the power was out for quite a while, so we sadly left without having tried the seal.

We headed home and noticed that the liquor store was open and bought a french wine. Then we had Pied du Vent cheese with baguette, smoked dried herring with baguette and cheese, and some nice wine. Not a bad way to end the day, even though power loss prevented me from blogging (a blessing for both yous and I?).

Bread, smoked scallops, and local cheese

Dinner!

Smoked herring

Candles helped light the darkened restaurant

The ferry is scheduled to depart at 0700 and we had to be at the dock at 0600. So we got up early and since the rain was coming down in buckets, got geared up. They let us on the ferry first, before the cars and trucks, so we didn't get super wet. The ferry ride was 5 hours and was a bit rolly given the wind and driving rain, but it gave our clothes time to dry out.

We donned all of our rain gear and disembarked once we had docked back on PEI, in Souris. It was about 7 degrees, not much wind, but torrentially raining. But we had a relatively short ride to St. Peter's Bay, maybe 50 km, Our Shower's Pass rain gear (from Portland) kept us dry inside (mostly) even though it rained the entire ride. And we made it in record time and got tucked into an awesome BnB right on the bay. We are going to walk to the little village for dinner, and there is even a Ceilidh tonight at the community hall (a local get together with music and revelry). We're going to stop by if the rain lets up a bit.

Here's a few photos from St. Peter's Bay. The rain hasn't let up much. Hopefully tomorrow will be better but probably not.

Rick's Fish & Chips, St. Peter's Bay, PEI

Total grease bombs! Call it Rick's Fish & Skips

The awesome BnB we're staying in.

We head to the big town of Charlottetown tomorrow, but first I wanted to add a short bit about drivers from Quebec. Where ever we are around the world riding the tandem, we quickly get a sense for how the local drivers are. Most everywhere we go, drivers are super courteous. It is always a joy to ride where the cars give us wide berth, slow down, give us a happy honk, etc. That is how it is in Nova Scotia and PEI. But Quebec is a huge exception: the drivers from Quebec are, in a word or two, super jerks. We always ride as far to the right side of the road as possible. Always. But in Quebec the drivers always have their right-side wheels over the white line. In NS and PEI the drivers all pull into the left hand lane when they pass us. But not the Quebecois. Super jerks, and so far as we can recall, the world's jerkiest drivers when it comes to cyclists.

We even tested our theory when we got off the ferry this morning. They let us off first, so we hit the road first. About 50 percent of the cars had NS or PEI plates, and 50 percent had Quebec plates. Our theory was close to 100 percent right. So here's a note to self: never go for a ride in Quebec! (Of course there are exceptions but our theory seems to hold true. So if you're from Quebec and are offended, no apologies from me!)