Advertisement
Published: October 14th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Touched down in lovely Canada, Ben and I had a rather hairy taxi ride from the airport to Quebec City. The cabbie was driving so fast that I had to ask him to slow down. Thrillseekers we are, suicidal we are not! His reply was "chill out lady, we all drive like this over here!" Ben's subconscious response was "no tippy for this cabby chappy!" and as a result led to some French profanities being thrown our way when we exited the cab... ooh la la!
To give you a bit of background on the Quebec province itself, it is 7 times the size of Britain or 3 times the size of France. We stayed in Quebec City, the capital of the province. Warm and welcoming Quebec City is the only fortified city north of Mexico City, hence why there is an abundance of historic sites there. Ben and I enjoyed a relaxing few days in Quebec taking in the spectacular views with its patchwork of rural landscapes and breathtaking lookout points. I say it was relaxing but every day we were faced with a monumental climb up to 'old town'. The fortified upper town is linked to the lower
town by a steep road and funicular railway. Seeing the railway option as a cop-out, Ben and I took on the climb each day and certainly earned our French onion soup for lunch!
It was a nice change for us to be surrounded by French speaking individuals, giving the place a really European feel. Not a Subway or McDonalds in sight, we wandered at our own leisure through the narrow back streets paying due homage to the monuments of Quebec City's past triumphs and tribulations, while all the while taking in the colours, sights and smells of the present.
The City's principal landmark is a hotel (which looks more like a castle), the Fairmont Chateau Frontenac, set in a dramatic location overlooking the town. Another feature of Quebec is its abundance of Christmas shops... and, boy, do they do them in style! Wall to wall decorations, trees and festive things... I was in heaven! Ben got bored after the first hour... hee hee!
Having travelled in the US for a number of weeks, the food in Quebec was a most welcome surprise. From French onion soup to snails and a local delicacy called pontine (glorified chips, cheese
and gravy which tastes nicer than it looks!) - we tried it all and savoured every mouthful. We even found a restaurant which offered a 2 for 1 five course meal which was delicious and only ended up costing us about 30 pounds... bargainous!
Montreal was our next stop on the east coast of Canada. We arrived at our hotel charmingly named 'The Lovely Celebrities Hotel'. Having only spent $50/night for the room, we were not expecting The Ritz. What we did find was a death trap waiting to happen! Here are just a few of the things that were wrong with our room:
1. Our bed was wonky which meant that Ben gradually slipped down and crushed me during the night;
2. The shelf was also wonky which meant that every time you placed something on there, it immediately fell off!
3. There were no curtains;
4. The light above our bed was precariously hanging from the light fitting by a cable which seemed like it could fall down at any second;
5. The central heating had broken in the hotel room and so the hotel were kind enough to lend us a portable heater. However, every time
we plugged it in, strange sparks flew out of the socket.
In summary, I am surprised that we made it out of there alive!
The above said, we did have a lovely time in Montreal. The city itself felt more Americanised than Quebec City but it still retained its own charm. Over the course of our stay, we met up with a couple of friends of mine who I had met on my previous travelling adventures. Marie was kind enough to take us on a day trip to Mont Tremblant, which is a wonderful ski resort just outside Montreal. Whilst there was no snow on the ground, we were able to use the cable cars and enjoy the quaint little shops and cafes. Camille took us out for a Portugese meal in Montreal itself and Ben and I enjoyed a wonderful meat feast. She also took us on a night time drive around the city. At one point we pulled over to take in the view and were greeted by vast quantities of racoons... how random! Not even Camille had heard of this before!
So we had a wonderful time in Canada and we have decided that we
would like to go back to do some skiing in the winter time. We are now in Cape Cod on the east coast of the US but I will let Ben tell you all about that in his next travel blog....... coming soon!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.055s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0338s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Diane P
non-member comment
Christmas Shop
I love the Christmas shop! I hope there are loads in New York (bad news for Ben). Lucky you got out of The Celebrities Hotel alive, especially after you were trapped in your room by mattresses! x