Quebec City

The streets of the Quebec City Old Town are straight from the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast. You could be forgiven for believing that Belle or her father were about to appear at any moment and there’s no doubt the Beast could be hiding in the Chateau Frotenac!

We took the car into town. I have finally got the gist of the offline maps.me app so finding our way around has suddenly become much easier and finding an all day park down by the waterfront was not difficult. From there we walked (and walked, and walked) up through the lower town to the funicular, an odd little elevator come cable car that takes you to the old city. There are so many shops to wander around. If I had any room at all in my luggage I could gladly have spent hours there but it’s really just teasing to window shop.

Quebec City is multi levelled and from the Old City you can go even higher, up about 300 steps to the promenade around the fortifications that would have originally protected the city. The view out over the St Lawrence is breath taking.

The Plains of Abraham spread out in hectares of green fields at the very top of the city. At this time of year they are home to the Quebec Music Festival and we saw some of the bands warming up. A few thousand more steps took us along the Grande-Alee, past the Parliament building, up to St Louis Gate, then down D’Auteuil to Place d’Youville, along the Cote-de-Fabrique and up to City Hall and the Basilica through streets full of very old and beautifully preserved buildings. There were buskers in the square and artists at work down many of the alley ways. It was like Paris without the Parisians (and have I mentioned yet how friendly the Quebecois are?).

We finally made our way back down to the waterfront and completed our visit with a wander through the harbour side market where we bought a tub of strawberries that were the size of small apples, for $2 (tax included!)

Taine has succumbed to a nasty sore throat so we let him choose dinner. He wanted ‘dirty bird’, known here as PFK – Poulet Frit Kentucky ! We had to drive half way across town for it but that gave us a chance to check out the different neighbourhoods.

Tonight, a quiet evening of PFK, beer and baseball in our hotel room (at the bargain price of $27.95 + beer a much better option than we took last night!)