Travel & Hospitality Class Trip to P.E.I.

On March 27^th of 2018 my Travel and Hospitality class at Oulton College went on a day trip to Prince Edward Island! The class was very excited for this trip, because we we’re going to meet a famous celeb chef, have a free liquor tasting, party on the bus ride there and back and explore some fancy hotels! 

It was an early, chilly, foggy Tuesday morning. Class usually starts at 8:30am, but considering we had to drive so long, we had to depart the college at 7:30am. A classmate of mine, Tiffany, had spent the night before at my place so she wouldn’t be late to miss the bus. We woke up at 6:30am, got all ready for the day, I packed us a big lunch to take, then we headed for the coach charter bus the school had rented for us to take! It was way bigger than I expected it to be! And way nicer as well! It had outlets, Wi-Fi (that didn’t work for me for some reason so I ended up using a bunch of data lol), a microphone (for jokes and karaoke), and TV screens with a DVD player so you could watch your own movies! It was quite nice J I sat all by myself which made it even nicer! I got to listen to my music, munch out and do my own thing the bus ride both there and back. On the ride to P.E.I. we watched Pans Labyrinth, which is a super twisted, messed up German movie that I watched late, late one night on teletoon all by myself when I was like 10 and it traumatized the hell out of me!! I just remember her dad being a huge abusive dick and reminded me of hitler, and the creepy, terrifying, no-face-eyes-in-hands monster thing!! Ugh so scary, and I couldn’t believe that’s what the class chose to watch on the drive there, lmfao. Anyways… Crossing the beautiful Confederation Bridge, the longest bridge in Canada, was nothing special in the morning. It was pure fog and you couldn’t see a thing. On the way back however, we stopped in front of it and got some great pictures, and the view driving across it was awesome!! All you could see was ocean and sky, nothing else, it was super pretty. Also, as you got closer to the New Brunswick side the water froze, and there was a perfect split between ice and water, which I thought was pretty neat.

Once in Prince Edward Island, our first stop was the Inn at Bay Fortune. Which is a super cute inn, basically in the middle of nowhere, that is ran by famous celeb Chef Michael Smith! He worked there when he was younger and it was owned by someone else. I’m not sure exactly how he ended up there of all places, being born in New York, but it was obviously meant to be because that’s what really started his cooking career. After working there, he moved away, and from 1998 – 2017 he starred on a bunch of cooking shows!! 8 to be exact. As he got older, he realized he wasn’t all about the celeb life, and missed P.E.I and the Inn.  He found out it was up for sale, and almost instantly he knew he wanted it. He also knew he really had to innovate it. And that’s exactly what he did! He created a very rare, unique, and one of kind experience. He decided that he wanted to have a big, huge, old school, family type style going on. They have their own farms right on site, where they grow and produce their own food. They make all of their guest dine and eat together at one large ass table and they ONLY cook with flame, fire and smoke! It’s really a super nice, natural, cozy, country, homey, true Canadian place to be really. He made it the only 5-star country inn on Prince Edward Island! He gave our class a great tour of the place, and was very detailed on his passions!! I just wish we would have seen the actual sleeping rooms!
When we left there, our next stop was the Great George Hotel. It was very classy! Seemed almost Royal like. It was very elegant and clean and proper like. The type of old fashioned and classy furniture you’d see at like the Queens castle! Ian, the guest experience manager and concierge, was our tour guide of the place. He was fabulous, such a nice, bubbly and chill, down to earth personality. He was super knowledgeable about the hotel too! It was a beautiful spot, they had tons of different accommodations, in the most stylish décor. It was one of the nicest hotels I’ve ever seen! The rooms were just all so unique and different, it was really cool. They even had cookies ready for us when we came! Great Spot!

Finally, our last official stop was at the Deep Roots Distillery! It’s a home owned and operated distillery that’s makes a variety of different liquors. It used to be a U-Pick apple orchard, until the owner realized that U-picks isn’t the best business to be in, and that people would often destroy or damage all his hard work. So, he switched over and started making the apples into liquor! He told us all about how it’s made, the legal process and the fermentation process and what not. And the best part, we got to taste like 4 different drinks! They were pretty good! 

Then we made a quick stop for food; I got some delicious subway and ran around like an idiot with Cody lol.  Then our quick stop for pictures and snowball fights at the bridge, then we were on our way back to New Brunswick! The drive home we watched Lilo and Stitch which was a MUCHHHH better option than the first one !! lol.

Over all it was a really great trip, cool experience, learned a lot, and had a blast!

Thanks Oulton for the experience!