Bonjour! Nous sommes arrivés à Québec City! Ok that’s the extend of my French abilities, aka Google translate helped. We had a full day planned for Quebec City and it started early. We knew that parking would not be cheap, or easy to find for that fact, so we headed in to the city and luckily found a spot in the garage across from the Museum of Civilization. This location was awesome as it would place us right next to the evening fireworks, and close enough to all the main tourist attractions we wanted to see.
We headed across the road and up the stairs at the museum and from there, well we just let our feet guide the way. The museum has some outside exhibits, of which this one was made from a bunch of barricade tape. The plaque on this exhibit reads “Barricade tape is a ubiquitous, man-made material, typically used to delineate a perimeter and keep people out, but in Roof Line Garden it invites people in, to inhabit an immersive environment”. The exhibit was made by Coryn Kempster and Julia Jamrozik.
As we wandered the streets of Old Quebec, there were many more places with street art. We visited a few little shops and Dan was lucky to find a nice bike jersey that is locally made.
When in Quebec City, you must take the Funicular. It beats walking up the multitude of steps to get from one street to the next. There is a cost to go up, but well worth it as we explained to Hayden what and how the funicular worked. At the top of the funicular we are right in front of the Chateau Frontenac. This is quite the hotel where you can take a tour around the inside and see some of the most expensive suites they have to offer. We had done this tour years ago prior to Hayden, but today was not a day for hotel tours.
On the boardwalk there was a winter carnival display where we entered a trailer and felt the conditions of “winter” in the middle of summer. We have not yet been to the winter carnival, as we tend to head to Ottawa for their winter festivals, but we just might come back this year.
More walking and more tourist shopping continued as we meandered in and around the streets. We found a very expensive car, went to see the Christmas store (I wouldn’t normally do this, but it was very festive), and walked the streets some more.
There was still lots of hours left to our day, so we made our way to the Citadelle, the old fort that protected the city. We arrived at the fort in perfect time as the next tour was leaving in just under 10 minutes. While we waited we had the best welcoming as there was a wedding happening on the grounds with one of the officers.
The tour took about an hour and we learned about the history of the Citadelle. We were able to tour some of the buildings in the fort, and was greeted with a great view of the city from the big cannon that is named “Rachel”.
Our tummies were getting rumbly, so back down to the main streets we headed looking for a place to have supper. We had spotted a burger joint earlier in the day and decided that would be the best place for supper. Even though it was still considered early enough for supper, there was still a bit of a wait to get a spot to sit down. The burger place was called Chic Shack, where we ordered burgers, a basket of fries and some drinks. The place was very cool as the ceiling had lots of drawings where many were of actual math formulas.
After supper we walked more of the streets and eventually went up and down Rue Saint-Jean. This street is blocked off to vehicular traffic and tourists are able to meander up and down, sideways, backwards, on their hands?? without the worry of getting hit by a car. Here we found an ice cream store that had a lactose free option, so Hayden and I both got an ice cream for our dessert.
There was one part of Quebec that I looked for all day and was still unsuccessful in finding it. When researching places and things to see and do around Old Quebec, there were pictures of a street that was lined with umbrellas in between the buildings. I knew that I wanted to find this street as it was very interesting to me. Finally on our final hours before heading back to the park where we would watch the fireworks that night we found the street! Funny enough, on Google maps it’s called Umbrella Alley, if we had only known that before it would have been easier for us to find. I was happy when we did find it!
It was finally time to end the day, so we headed to the park by the waterfront where the city was preparing the firework display for that evening. It was the last night for the display, and what a showing! The fireworks were going off for close to 30 minutes! This was by far the best firework display we have ever seen and we were glad we decided to stick around and wait for this event.
It was now time for us to depart and we did so at a snails pace as all the other tourists were leaving at the same time. We said “au revoir” to Quebec City, but vowed we would return again soon.
We had now been on the road for a month and it was time to head home. We hope you have enjoyed reading about our adventures in Eastern Canada.
Sure brought back a lot of memories, need to go back.