Blogs from Québec City, Quebec, Canada, North America

Québec is Canada's most romantic city and is highly recommended for any traveler. The city itself is expansive but I advise staying within the city walls of Old Québec as that's the most charming part of town. It is filled with history and culture, as well as wonderful restaurants, cafes, bars and shops, and is absolutely worth a couple of days of exploring. You could consider a cruise on the St. Lawrence River, and there are museums and historical tours. If there is a meat-eater in your party then Le Lapin Sauté is recommended for lunch, as well as Bistrot Pape Georges. Definitely try the sortilege maple whiskey at Pub l'Oncle Antoine, and perhaps pay a visit to the historic Fairmont le Chateau Frontenac and its lovely bar. In the evening there are regular jazz performances ... read more

This is our last port before disembarking in Montreal. The last two days have been a bit of an adventure. Two nights ago I had a double order of escargot. They didn’t taste as good as usual but I ate them any. Later in the piano bar I started coughing and hiccups and then threw up in my wine glass. Account to Marilyn I was very discreet. I sat out the set and went to my cabin at the break. During the night all hell broke loose. I won’t go into details. My throat was very sore and I had a headache. First thing in the morning I went to sick bay, had a Covid test and was negative. I am fully boosted but all night I was wondering what would happen if I had to ... read more

This morning we’ve arranged to do a tour of the Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac. We meet our guide, Thomas, who tells us that he’s a French travelling salesman, and that he’s 112 years old. We’re perhaps struggling a bit with that last bit, but at least he’s dressed the part. We’re told that the Chateau is named after Louis de Buade de Frontenac who was a much loved Governor General of New France in the late seventeenth century. It was originally built by the Canadian Pacific Railways as part of the company’s grand railways hotel program which includes such other icons as the Banff Springs Hotel, Chateau Lake Louise and the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton Lakes National Park. The logic was that if they built a railway, the passengers were more likely to travel ... read more

I’m up early to head to the Citadelle to watch the changing of the guard. Well at least that was the plan until I looked out the window at rain and grey skies, so instead we spend the morning doing very little. The sun eventually appears, but Issy’s decided on a rest day so I head off to the Citadelle alone. There seem to be a lot of soldiers around; I’m stopped at the gate and told that it’s still an active military base. It seems therefore that if I want to see it I need to take a tour. I’m told that if I try to wander around by myself they’ll think I’m a spy, and that mightn’t end well. We’re told that there‘d been some sort of fortification on this site since the early ... read more

We get a late night message from a mysterious stranger asking if he can meet us for breakfast to show us “something really cool”. Perhaps unsurprisingly we don’t usually accept invitations like these, but this sounds intriguing, and anyway, if he’s going to try to murder us or do something else shifty, surely he wouldn’t do it in broad daylight in front of a whole bunch of people in the hotel restaurant. He pulls a small box discretely from his pocket, and we wait with bated breath as he opens it. Cocaine or heroin perhaps? That’s not what it looks like, although that said I’m not sure either of us would know a line of cocaine (it’s slightly concerning that I know that cocaine comes in “lines” - too much late night TV perhaps) if it ... read more