Quebec Journey

After a lovely visit with our friends Laurie and Ian in Avril Park, NY we drove 6 hours to Quebec City. At first we thought we'd made a wrong turn since it looked like Ohio or Indiana for miles and miles until we left the flatlands to the searing cliffs of Quebec and the St. Lawrence River.  This is the famous Frontenac hotel which is quite close to our tiny hotel (20 rooms).

View of the St. Lawrence River.

Frontenac from our hotel window. Notice everything is wet.

 

 Night view.

Our  cute hotel room. The hotel has a surprisingly good restauarant.

 Day 2

If you want to go to France without going to France, this might be the place! When we realized it was going to rain EVERY DAY we were there, we decided to bring rain gear and make the best of it. Today we did a 2 hour walking tour of the city. It was great, and there were a few minutes when it wasn't raining, many with a drizzle and several downpour moments. Even our guide seemed a bit thrown by it. She was a great guide, but don't ask us to repeat the details of Quebec history. A lot to take in.

 There is a ton of construction going on everywhere and also people putting up tents for special events. This was the closest we could get to take of photo of the wall mural.

This sign was intriguing. There was also a T-shirt in the window with the same sentiment. Apparently, it translates roughly as the hell with fashion, we don't care about fashion. We didn't buy the T-shirt.

This may look like an ordinary red door but it's a HUGE tourist attraction. There is a South Korean TV show where the characters go through this red door to another world. Apparently, thousands of South Koreans come to see this door and have their photos taken by the door. So many, that in the summer, there are actually direct flights between Seoul and Quebec City!

The old city of Quebec is built on 2 levels. You can walk up many, many many stairs to get from one spot to another, or you can take this funicular. Neither Kate nor I are fond of heights and looking down but less fond of many, many steps.

Views from the funicular.

Back on land. Lovely street.

Sora makes a new friend.

This is the Basilica of Notre Dame.

When the English defeated the French, they wanted their own churches, less elaborate.

Kate has fun in the children's exhibit. This is from the museum of the Ursaline nuns.  

The good news is that the nuns provided an education for young girls. That's the end of the good news. Some girls joined the convent and others, as you can see below, were in training to be good Christian wives and mothers. The girls must have been quite young because they said they cried and cried when they left their parents.

Day 3

A very different day. Since it actually wasn't going to rain today, we decided to leave the city. As we drove from historic Quebec City, we saw the modern city, with office buildings, stores, where the normal people live and work. We decided to go to the Huron Wendat Museum of the local Native Americans. First, we got lost and thought we'd ended up in rural Maryland.

   

 

Finally we found the Museum

I took a few photos of the native dress before I saw a sign that said no photos!

Kate and I had the same reaction to this place.   It would have been great to take Miriam when she was a kid on a family trip. The second thought is that we are extremely spoiled living in DC. We have the wonderful Museum of the American Indian and this was teeny by comparison. Not sure we'd recommend it for a visit to Quebec City,.

This is the long house and you can spend the night here. Not sure why you'd want to but it seemed to scream school field trip.  

Next we went to Montmorency Falls. We are so missing our dog Summer, so we glad to make the acquaintance of Tokyo and Hope.

There a several ways to view the falls. For those with better knees, you can walk down and up a zillion steps to see the falls from different angles -- where they probably look exactly the same.

I took some nice videos of the falls but they didn't upload -- so hear are some photos.

After visiting the falls, we had  a lovely lunch at the restaurant overlooking the falls.

The claim to fame for the falls is that they are 100 feet higher than Niagara Falls. If you're in Quebec, come see it. We wouldn't tell you to make a trip just to see it but if you've never seen Niagara Falls and ridden on the Maid of the Mist boat, we'd tell you to make a trip.

Day 4

Not what we had in mind. Planned to do more in Quebec City, go to Maine and visit with Kate's relatives and our friends, head to NYC where we bought theater tickets, had other plans ---

But instead -- I came down with Covid.  So much for the best laid plans. We are driving home today and will need to find somewhere to stay along the way to break up the trip. Sigh!