Blogs from Québec City, Quebec, Canada, North America

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

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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