Blogs from Québec City, Quebec, Canada, North America - page 11

The ride from Ottawa to Quebec City via routes 148, 344 and 138 was some of the best scenery we have ever driven/ridden through. I know I will have trouble finding words other than beautiful, spectacular, pretty, impressive, and gorgeous to describe most of the route. If anyone plans to drive this part of the country and has time to spare, take this way. Avoid the Trans Canada no matter what. The route is lined with farmstead after farmstead, cut out of the landscape into long skinny plots with the short end butting up against either the Ottawa River or the St. Lawrence. It reminded me, on a larger scale and rivers excepted, of Lincolnshire, the county in which I was born and grew up, where one small intimate village comprising brick cottages, farmhouses, bed and ... read more

Journée de tempête au Québec. On dirait que j'ai encore plus hâte à mon départ à cause de ca!! J'ai donc décidé que je me mettrais dans le beat en créant ma première entrée sur mon blog. Faut bien faire qques tests avant de partir!! Pour ceux qui l'ignore encore, je tombe en vacances le 20 décembre, en différé le 3 janvier et en voyage le 20 janvier; bref je suis à peu près à 1 mois de mon départ! Avec le décompte vient les préparatifs et le stress de tout organiser... Honnêtement, ça va plutôt bien. Mais malgré toute la préparation que j'ai pu avoir depuis qques mois, il arrive toujours des surprises en cours de route; un employé d'une institution bancaire qui est désolé que je n'ai pas compris que je n'aurais pas accès ... read more

Geo: 46.8266, -71.3024It was an easy 3 hour drive up to Quebec, where the pine trees begin to take over from deciduous fall colours. We're now in hotels for 10 days and on our own. Time to spread out a bit, more reading and exploring, probably determined to some extent by variable weather. The dominance of French speakers, French signage and culture seems somehow misplaced in this huge American continent, but history tells you otherwise. The Quebecois language is, however, fairly impenetrable, with a strong accent and local vocabulary. They think French French rather posh. Communicating in English is a fail safe!our small hotel was walking distance from the old town and surrounded by useful shops and resturants. We followed the hotelier's advice for resturants, not knowing any better, and had two great American brunches and ... read more

Well, we spent another day walking all over old Quebec City but today we gave up an hour earlier! C'est la fatigue accumulée! We ache all over! But we’ve had a marvelous time. Easier to reflect on that from the relative comfort of our room, however. We started out our morning with a caleche ride. It seemed like a pretty good thing to do, given that it was pouring rain this morning. This would have been even more fun on a dry day, with the roof down, but it was pleasant to ride at a slow pace and our driver was extremely knowledgeable about the history of this city, so we learned a lot. We paid another visit to Le Cochon Dingue for café au lait (Roberta) and chocolat chaud à l'ancien (me). Then we visited ... read more

Thursday started early, but I almost missed it. When setting an alarm on my phone, it defaults to the current day so I had two 4:00am alarms set for the wrong day. Fortunately, I had a dream where I missed an alarm for something because I had decided to sleep outside for some reason. This started me awake at 4:15am, which was really lucky! I was able to get ready in time, even considering that the airport shuttle arrived early. There’s not a lot to say about the flight to Toronto. It was on time and good enough. Once we landed, I had about an hour’s wait until the flight to Quebec city boarded. This flight was on a small turbo-prop plane which made sense when we landed at Quebec city airport – it was like ... read more