In less than a week we will be meeting you all in beautiful Charlottetown, PE, but before you join us on our island, we wanted to give you information and a few tips about the area.
Road Work:
If you are flying into the Charlottetown airport, one of the first features of PEI summer that you may encounter is crews working to fix and improve our local roads.
If you are planning to use your GPS device to find your way around, be advised that a detour is in place on the standard route from the airport: when you arrive at the airport terminal, you will exit to Brackley Point Road via Maple Avenue. Brackley Point road south bound (your left) will take you to city centre of Charlottetown, north bound (your right) will take you towards Brackley Beach, or via using the roundabout you may reach Sherwood Road which will take you to Route 2, Malpeque Road
If that all sounds even more confusing, worry not. Charlottetown's not a big place and it's hard to get *really* lost. Just look for University Avenue, which runs through downtown up to UPEI and beyond. The conference venue, banquet dinner, and a ton of dining and shopping options are all in the downtown core.
Getting Around:
Charlottetown is a very walkable city, especially if you are staying near the conference venue downtown. There are a wide variety of shops, restaurants, and other diversions within a few scenic blocks.
Public Transit is available around Charlottetown. The schedule can be found here. Cabs are also readily available around Charlottetown with very reasonable fares.
PEI itself is better explored with a car so you can take in the sights. Discount Car and Truck rentals is offering special rate for conference attendees (details here) or you can head over to the conference's CrowdVine hangout to put together a group road trip and make some new friends.
Where to Eat:
We are looking forward to hosting you for Wednesday night's banquet dinner at Victoria Row, but what about the other evenings?
There is a lot to taste in Charlottetown. We are providing a restaurant guide in your conference bag, which you can peruse on the fly. Or you can use tools like EatsPEI or Tourism PEI to plan out some places you'd like to visit. Most will take reservations for larger parties if you need to get together with colleagues. Many of the downtown restaurants have outdoor patios, which provide an excellent opportunity for a relaxing evening of drinks and food.
Make sure to try some of the dishes Canada and PEI is known for such as: oysters, mussels, poutines, and donairs!
Most downtown restaurants stop serving food between 10pm and Midnight. If you are looking for a late night snack we suggest some of the following places, which serve until 3-4am: China Garden, Pizza and Poutine Co. and Canton.
Weather:
It's summer in PEI, which usually means mild, sunny weather with a pleasant breeze. Temperatures average around the 20s in Celsius (70s Fahrenheit), dipping a few degrees when it's cloudy. Rain tends to be pretty light.
Mosquitoes, while not *quite* qualifying as the provincial bird, tend to make their presence known in the evenings and a little bug repellent might be in order if you're going exploring out-of-doors.
Other:
To help out with general questions, like how to deal with our colorful money or what to expect from the weather, we have put together a page of general information about Canada, PEI, and Charlottetown.
If you have any questions at all or if there is anything we can to do help you plan your stay, please drop us a line at or2013@or2013.net or on Twitter at @OpenRepos2013
See you next week!
The OR2013 Team
