Charlottetown

Charlottetown is the capital city of Prince Edward Island in Atlantic Canada. Charlottetown is a great place to spend a few days. It's a quaint and pretty town, small enough to be able to walk around, and has lots of good restaurants and bars. It's also within easy reach of the Prince Edward Island National Park.

Understand
Charlottetown was named after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, queen consort of King George III of the United Kingdom. Charlottetown was incorporated as a city in 1855.

It was the site of the famous Charlottetown Conference in 1864, the first gathering of Canadian and Maritime statesmen to discuss the proposed Maritime Union. This conference led, instead, to the union of British North American colonies in 1867, which was the beginning of the Canadian confederation. PEI, however, did not join Confederation until 1873. From this, the city adopted as its motto Cunabula Foederis, "Birthplace of Confederation". In 2016, it was home to about 36,000 people, with 77,000 in the metropolitan area.

Tourist information

 * Discover Charlottetown website

Destinations

 * Direct flights to Fredericton within Canada include from Montreal (1.5 hours) and from Toronto (2 hours).

Airlines

 * Airlines operating to Charlottetown include:

By bus

 * Operates a bus route between Charlottetown and Amherst including a stop in Borden. Travel time to Charlottetown from Borden is 55 minutes and from Amherst is 2 hours.
 * Travel to Charlottetown from the following destinations involving same day transfers is as follows:
 * From Summerside (1.25 hours) with a transfer in Borden.
 * From Moncton (3 hours) and Halifax (5 hours) with a transfer in Amherst.
 * From Bathurst (6.25 hours), Campbellton (7.5 hours), Edmundston (9.5 hours), Fredericton (5.75 hours), Miramichi (5.25 hours), and Saint John (6 hours) with transfers in Moncton and Amherst.
 * From Antigonish (5.75 hours), North Sydney (8.5 hours), Sydney (9.25 hours) with transfers in Truro and Amherst.

By car
Highway 1, a branch of the Trans-Canada Highway, connects Charlottetown with the Confederation Bridge located west or and the ferry from Caribou (Nova Scotia) located east, which are the two ways to reach Prince Edward Island. Charlottetown is 11 hours along the Trans-Canada Hwy from Montreal (Rivière-du-Loup, Edmundston, Fredericton, Moncton) or 3.5 hours from Halifax.

Get around
Taxis are cheap. $10 gets you from the airport to downtown. $6-10 will get you anywhere around town. All taxis are flat rate by zone. None has any specific licensing information in them; not to worry though, taxi drivers are typically friendly, enjoy meeting tourists, and are honest above all else. Charlottetown is a small, very accessible city: you can walk almost anywhere downtown.

Most of downtown is also easy to walk through, a bit less in winter.

By public transit




See




Do
At the harbourfront you can get on a seal-watching tour boat, while from the airport's Skyplex you can go on an air tour.

Buy
Charlottetown contains two major shopping centres: the Confederation Court Mall (downtown, across from Province House), and the Charlottetown Mall, which is outside of town in West Royalty, on University Avenue. They contain the usual anchor stores (Winners, SportsChek, etc.), and many smaller stores. West Royalty also has many stand-alone big-box stores, such as Wal-Mart, and Canadian Tire.

If you get off the beaten path, though, you'll find lots of great specialty shops just waiting for your business. Walks along Queen St. and University Ave. (among others) will yield wonderful surprises in terms of shopping selection.

Groceries are readily available from many major supermarkets within Charlottetown. Typical closing time is 10PM. Sunday store hours are generally noon to 5PM.

Sleep
There is no reason to stay at a chain hotel or motel in Charlottetown. The city is dotted with some of the cutest, and most comfortable, inns and B&Bs you can imagine. All offer fantastic service and most have locations that allow you to walk downtown. They will often be cheaper and offer much more comfortable accommodations than a hotel. These places live and die by their reputation, so most innkeepers are incredibly helpful. In winter, many places are closing for the season.



Connect




Go next

 * Head west on Route 2 for 60 km to Summerside