Day 8 - UPEI

Hello friends, today the realization hit me that I am going to be on an island in the Atlantic Ocean... I was in Southern Ontario less than a week ago and my life has been a roller coaster ride since then. We woke up this morning after quite a peaceful night at Celine's grandparent's place, and we came downstairs to some freshly-made pancakes and a bag full of sandwiches and snacks for the road. I don't know what we did to deserve this, but I am very grateful for all of their support.

We then hit the road and made our way to Prince Edward Island, and awe-inspiring doesn't even come close to describe how beautiful it is. We got onto the Confederation Bridge which connects New Brunswick and PEI, and all we could see were beautiful blue skies and breathtaking waters. At one point on the bridge, we could see both ends of the island, truly a sight to behold. We were told that we needed to go check out the shore in Victoria, PEI and so we did just that. One very interesting thing that we noticed is that the sand and the dirt in PEI was red, which I've never seen before.

In terms of visiting the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI), we met up with my friend Tiffany Cameron, who was kind enough to take a few hours off of work to show us around. Their campus had a road that surrounded their entire campus, very similar to Ring Road at Waterloo. They only have one Engineering discipline, Sustainable Design Engineering, and a total of 250 Engineering students throughout all 4 years, which is very different to anything else I had seen thus far. The overall campus is larger than you would think for such a small number of students, but the community feels very strong (I feel like that is just a thing throughout all of PEI).Their Engineering building though is very state-of-the-art, and there is so much space for students to work in. The facilities available to students are fantastic, and the research opportunities for undergrads is plentiful. I don't know what expectations I had for UPEI when I got there, but I was blown away by their facilities, and everything made sense given what I learned about PEI today.

After finishing up the tour, Tiffany recommended that we go to DT Charlottetown to explore, and that we go to "The Gahan House" for lunch as they had some of the best craft beers in town, and they had great food. Anthony really enjoyed the beer, and we both really enjoyed the food. I had the donair burger, and if you don't know what donair, you are missing out and need to get to the East Coast pronto. While driving around, I saw a sign that read "Engineers PEI", the PEI equivalent to Professional Engineers Ontario, and it was in a small house, which I thought was fascinating. Anthony and I then went to the waterfront and took a few pictures, still in awe at the beauty of the Atlantic.

We then drove down to Cavendish, a resort area in Northern PEI, because we were told that it's a beautiful spot to visit. For reference of how small PEI is, Charlottetown is more or less in the South and Cavendish is in the North, and they are about 1/2 an hour apart. In this case, size doesn't matter, as we were completely blown away by it all. Cavendish had some very cool rocks and cliffs to take pictures with, the air was just so fresh, and the sound of the water was just so soothing. No pictures could ever do justice to the views we saw today, so I would recommend to everyone to visit PEI at least once in your life time.

As we were leaving, my GPS guided me down a dirt road, and my car got stuck in some mud. After a few minutes of trying to get it out, I finally managed to do it, but the car was completely covered in orange mud. I feel like no matter how well I wash it, I will always have a little bit of PEI with me on my travels. It didn't matter though, today was great and so it felt like it was worth it. When we got back to Tiffany's place, we dropped some stuff off and went out to Hunter's Ale House for some half-price nachos. What we didn't realize is that the deal only applied to their "Hunter Size" nachos, which was HUGE! Tiffany and I ended up sharing one and barely survived, Anthony got one on his own and wasn't so lucky (but hey, at least he has left overs).

Tomorrow we head over to Nova Scotia, and will be spending the next 2 days in Halifax, which should be an exciting time!

UPEI: www.instagram.com/p/Bif-WUVF4YO