Blogs from Québec City, Quebec, Canada, North America

Quebec through the eyes of two heygo guides. Patrick, who usually guides in Banff was on a road trip of Eastern Canada - he spent time during different parts of the day to show us around Quebec’s interesting and picturesque locations. As the only French-speaking region of North America, Quebec is unlike anywhere else on the continent. The majority of the population consists of French-Canadians, the descendants of 17th century French settlers who have resisted centuries of pressure to assimilate into Anglo society. The city’s splendid views of the surrounding landscape and unique character were noted as early as 1842 during a visit by Charles Dickens, who called Quebec the “Gibraltar of North Amerca.” The city has three principal districts: Upper Town, Lower Town, and St. Roch. We visited both upper & lower town during the ... read more

Day 3: Bonjour! Up at 6am as we are going to Quebec City, a three hour drive east, down the St. Lawrence River. Our Gray Line shuttle picks us up at the hotel at 7:25 and it is full except for 2 seats in the back. We squish in the back. I'm next to two men from Germany. The ladies next to Cope in the seats in front of me, are from England and we hear Spanish someplace around the driver. This shuttle will take us to the "real" bus for our 3 hour ride to Quebec City. When we get to the Gray Line Station in downtown Montreal we are told that our internet printed tickets are not really tickets so we have to go wait in line and get real tickets. Okay ;-) When ... read more

Just as a “housekeeping note”, we wanted to pass along a thought: We have been told with great authority a time or two through the years that French Canadians tend to be very rude and refuse to speak English even if they are fluent in the language. Our experience has been just the opposite. We came here knowing that there could be a language barrier because we might have ten words of French between the two of us...spoken with a Tennessee accent no less! With the exception of one person we came in contact with (and we think he was having a bad day), everyone was more than kind, and bent over backwards to answer any questions, give any needed directions, try to help us pick up a French word or two, and even asked us ... read more

As one note of interest, we wanted to comment on how very clean we have found Quebec City to be on this visit. We don’t know if it is because it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, whether it is because they have just finished having and then cleaning up after their annual 11day summer music festival, or whether Canadians are just automatically super clean! At any rate, and for whatever reason, this is an exceptionally clean city! Our intention and plan for the day was to walk around the city on the top of the wall that surrounds most of it. That turned out to not be totally possible. Quebec City (and we assume the Provincial government) is in the throes of repairing many things in this area, the wall being one of the many ... read more

DISCLAIMER: I have finished working on this post this morning and am having trouble with a few of the pictures. At the beginning there may be two pictures which are mislabeled. I corrected further down in the post but it looks like they won’t stay corrected. There are a couple more errors in the pictures, but again it looks like I can’t “force” a correction. Having said that, it may come through to you perfectly fine. Those of you who are familiar with the area please cut me some slack...those of you who are not...just continue to assume I am awesome! This has been a long day so I may cut some corners, but bear with me...also, I don’t think I can get this ready to send out until morning. We had another wonderful breakfast at ... read more