*POST UPDATED OCTOBER 2026
Hi, friends! I hope this post finds you well and in a good mood, because otherwise my overwhelmingly happy tone will likely irritate you! It brings me so much joy to share with you today: Exploring Summerside, Prince Edward Island. Aka, my first ever Canadian blog post!! After wanting to visit Canada for so very long, it seems almost unreal to me that we actually made it there – at last! It only took three years, four differently planned trips, and three cancelled flights, but who’s counting? Fiancé & I, along with his parents, finally crossed the pond to the land of maple syrup this past August, for an extremely Covid-delayed family wedding. Me being me, on this my first ever time in Canada, we used said wedding as an excuse to explore as much as possible. Spoiler alert: we had the best time ever!
Over the course of our entire trip, we hit up three provinces, Nova Scotia / New Brunswick / Prince Edward Island, and three cities/towns: Lunenburg, Summerside, and Halifax. Normally, I like to share our trips in chronological order of the way they actually happened, but I’m going slightly off-piste with these Canadian posts. Summerside was actually the second spot we visited – we had been in Lunenburg, NS for a couple days beforehand – but the photos from Summerside turned out much more, well, summery, so it makes more seasonal sense to share this post first.
Let’s just get straight into it, shall we? Heaps and heaps of information below: fun PEI facts, how to get there, where we stayed, ate, drank, tourist-ed, etc.!
Enjoy!
before you visit + fun PEI facts
A few things to consider if you’re thinking about visiting Summerside, as well as a small handful of fun facts about PEI. Don’t you just love having some fun facts up your sleeve?
according to my research, PEI as a whole is a very seasonal place to visit. We visited at the height of the summer travel season, so everything was open and busy etc., but in the off-seasons apparently many attractions/restaurants close. Something to keep in mind if you’re looking to visit off-season!
Summerside is one of only two cities on the whole of PEI. Charlottetown is the capital, and Summerside is the second city – although I don’t get the impression that either of them are very large. Everywhere on the island outside of these two cities is considered rural.
Prince Edward Island is the smallest province in Canada – by like, a lot – and you can drive from one end to the other in around 3-hours. It is also one of the least visited provinces in all of Canada, often competing for the least visited spot with Nunavut, a province in the arctic region.
PEI is famous for its red soil and red sandy beaches. According to the internet, this is due to a high iron content, which turns the soil red when exposed to air. The red soil + beaches made for some rather pretty drives & walks, it’s very visually striking!
PEI is also famous for its potatoes! I love a good potato, and while I didn’t have a bad potato during my time on the island, I’m not sure I noticed a particularly big difference from Irish potatoes. We saw loads of potato farms on our drive into Summerside – PEI produces about 1/4 of all of Canada’s potatoes! – and even a few plastic potato souvenirs in tourist shops. Crazy!
getting there
With Fiancé’s parents, we drove from Lunenburg to Summerside via a detour through Halifax, before eventually crossing over the Confederation Bridge into PEI. Due to a few hiccups along the way, the drive ended up taking 2-hours longer than it should have, but we got there in the end. Whether you’re looking to visit Summerside by air, car, or boat, I’ve got all the details below!
Charlottetown Airport is the only airport in PEI, and from my understanding, it’s quite small. There are just four airlines that fly in/out of the province, and only with routes to/from other Canadian cities, so you’ll likely have to connect. More info about the airport here. From Charlottetown Airport, the drive to Summerside takes just under 1-hour.
alternatively, if you’re coming from nearby Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, you can drive to PEI via the Confederation Bridge. From Halifax to Summerside, the drive should take about 3.5-hours. There is a toll for crossing the bridge (at the time of our trip it was $50.25 CAD for cars) but it only has to be paid when leaving the island en route back to the mainland.
if you’re not keen on driving over water, you could instead take the ferry from Nova Scotia to PEI. It leaves Caribou, NS, and arrives in Wood Islands, PEI, 75-minutes later. The drive from Wood Islands to Summerside should take about 1.5-hours. Fiancé’s parents were initially leaning towards this option, but you have to arrive at the ferry 40-minutes before setting sail and, all in all, it was just working out at too long a journey.
I understand that in all three of the above scenarios you need to drive or have access to a car, but if you don’t: Maritime Bus offer a couple services from Halifax and nearby. More bus timetable info can be found here.