October 21, Saturday in Quebec City

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Boy, there’s no rest for the wicked OR the weary in this house.

The bed was very comfy but David awoke naturally at 6 instead of 7’s alarm, so up and at ‘em we were, having breakfast before driving the expected 3 hours to Quebec City. Why? Because it’s due to rain in Montreal all day, but less so in Q.C., and more there on Sunday.

So the GPS took us south out of the city across the St. Lawrence thru a tunnel. LOTS of road construction but eventually we were driving in the countryside. Actually this southern route highway was probably a new road, usually paralleling existing roads between small towns. This highway is now full of industry and buildings, but we still saw lots of farms and one field of giant Charleroi cattle.

By the way the signs are not bilingual at all, pas de tout! And of course the speed is in KM, but that’s ok. $50 got us about ½ tank of gas.

On the way we had lots of time to google some things, like if this is the furthest north in North America we’d been. I knew it was further north than where we’ve visited in Maine, but it is not as North as Ely or the Boundary Waters at the MN/Canadian border.

Noticed that the trees near the highway were well and alive, unlike the trees near our interstates, where we think the fumes kill them.

The Canadians are very ecologically minded, no paper or plastic bags and recycling of course. But I also saw an excellent idea – coffee stirrers that were ½ lengths of spaghetti noodles! We saw a number of areas of “Beware , Moose Crossing,” and an Ocreanspray factory. Guess it’s cranberry area too.

Because it wasn’t raining much yet we headed straight to the Montmorency Falls, or “chute.” Everything along the St. Lawrence seems to be up on a plateau, so this falls of 83M (about 100’ more than Niagara but a lot less volume!) came over this intimidating escarpment. Not knowing anything, we parked at the top and paid for the cable car down and back. We could have parked down and seen it. Oh well. Nice walk down at the bottom.

Then on to Old Town where we tried to find the Basilica. We evidently drove right by it, but where does one park? We found one spot on the street which seemed legal but then couldn’t figure out the payment machine. Good grief. So we drove outside the ancient walls and parked in a garage and walked back in. By then we were really hungry and it was raining more so we popped into “Au petit coin Breton” – a little corner of Breton. Brittany is a very non-french area of France. They are Celtic background. And when we had chatted with a family on the cable car and they said they were from France, I asked if they had problems with the way the Canadian spoke it. She laughed and said ‘well, we’re from Brittany.” Evidently they sound very different, have their own dialect in fact. The specialty of the Breton restaurant was filled crepes – with cheese, runny eggs, spinach, mushrooms, etc. Nothing like we’ve ever had. And shared a salad.

After that we hiked up up up to the heights of the Old Town to the citadel. It is a massive fort and earthworks. And boy were we getting wet. It was blowing so much on the heights that it was hard to keep the umbrella up too. Fortunately we had both raincoats and our ponchos (getting ready for birding again!!)

The goal was to look down onto the Plains of Abraham, both of us remembering our history lessons when the British general Wolfe secretly got his entire regiment up the escarpment to beat Montcalm. No wonder the Quebecois don’t like the English. Having finally seen this large expanse of green,, with memorials and paths all over, above the edge of the cliffs, we worked our way back to the parking garage. We went right past the Parliament building (of the province) and many people were protesting against the Israelis. In fact we had been passed by an entire squadron of motorcycle police when we’d arrived – that’s where they were. It was raucous but orderly. We were tempted to walk to the Basilica at last, but thankfully saw that it was closing within a half hour.

So, driving home in driving rain again. We made it in less than 3 hours – better traffic on the north side of the St. Lawrence? Just cooked a taco hamburger salad for supper and I’m ready for a hot bath and bed! Sadly it’s due to rain all day tomorrow here in Montreal. Just have to get these coats dry and ready for a walking tour of the Old Town and this Basilica, which is evidently beautiful.

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