September 30, 2012 - Quebec City, Canada

The weather today has been abysmal.  The wind has been ferocious, but we are making the best of it.

Breakfast is included in our hotel and it was a nice continental - toast, cereals, hard boiled eggs, croissants and, reminiscent of our hotel in Prague, ham and cheeses.  There were also fruit salad, apples, and oranges.  Coffee was good, but no good tea selection.

Funicular connecting upper town and lower town

 

After breakfast, it was overcast, cool, and very windy, but not yet raining.  We walked over, through the lower town, to the funicular.  I can't say enough how picturesque a little city Quebec is with its old cobblestone streets lined with shops, restaurants, and cafes.  For $2 CAD the funicular takes you up to the upper town (there are steps too, but it is well worth the $2 to avoid them) to a wide promenade in front of Quebec City's most recognizable landmark, the Victorian Era Chateau Frontenac hotel.  The view of the St. Lawrence, dotted with cruise ships, was stunning, even with the clouds and wind.  Although I think Lisa was getting frustrated with the picture taking because her hair was blowing everywhere.  I wore a hat, but I was constantly tightening the adjustable size, afraid in would blow off!

We wanted to tour the hotel, but with steady rain in the forecast for the afternoon we decided to tour the Citadel before it started to rain.

Fortifications at the Citadel

The Citadel was built on Cap Diamant (so named for the quartz deposits that Cartier initially thought were diamonds), the highest point in Quebec City and the narrowest point in the St. Lawrence river (from which Quebec derives its name, from the Algonquin word kebec, meaning where the river narrows), making it an ideal location for a fortification.  There are some 17th century French buildings on the site, but the current fort was constructed as a British fort in 1820 - out of concerns that the U.S. might try again to invade Canada.  It has the same "star" design with corner bastions as other forts of the era, such as Baltimore's Fort McHenry.  It is still an active military base, of sorts, as it is the headquarters of the Royal Canadian 22nd Regiment (although the whole regiment is no longer barracked there), a French-Canadian regiment formed in 1914 to fight in World War I.  The motto of the regiment is the motto of the province of Quebec, "Je me souviens," or, "I remember," - specifically, for the soldiers, that they remember their fallen comrades.  A cross from Vimy, France, stands as a memorial to the regiment's first victory and the thousands that lost their lives achieving it.

View of the St. Lawrence from the Citadel

The tour of the Citadel was very good and again the views of the city, the river, and the Chateau Frontenac were spectacular.  We were also there for the firing of the cannon, which happens every day at noon, so that was pretty cool.  It replaced a ball, visible from the river, that used to rise at noon and descend at 1 PM.  Both were originally to communicate to ships docked there accurate local time to which to set clocks to subsequently be able to find longitude at sea.  Unfortunately, the only do the changing of the guard ceremony in the summer (through mid-September).  After riots in the 1830's, internal defenses were built to fall back on, in case they (British soldiers) were attacked by Quebecois!  This culminates on a long promontory overlooking the river with an absolutely stellar view!  One the two official residences (the other, I presume, is in Ottawa) of the Governor-General of Canada (the British monarch's regent in Canada as officially the reigning monarch of England is still the head of state in Canada) is also in the Citadel.  You can tour this, but we did not.

View of Chateau Frontenac and Promenade from Citadel

There are a couple of museums about the regiment in the Citadel.  One had a display about the regiment in Afghanistan.  They were the last Canadian combat unit to leave Afghanistan last year (AUTHOR'S NOTE: U.S. and Allied Forces had invaded Afghanistan in 2002 for harboring the Al Qaida terrorists that planned the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.  As of this writing, U.S. Forces still occupied Afghanistan).  A large parade area in the center of the Citadel is used for ceremonies, including remembrance of the Battle of Vimy on April 9.

After touring the Citadel, we walked back toward Chateau Frontenac and found a lovely little place for lunch on Rue Saint-Louis called Restaurant Le Cavour.  They had Quebec beers from the Unibroue brewery - I had the Matilde, a red been which I had also had at dinner last night, and Lisa had their white beer.  Both were very good.  For lunch, Lisa had a cheese crepe in white sauce and I had the filet of sole lunch special which, in addition to the fish (which was tasty), included a delicious carrot soup and a small amount of carrots, mashed potatoes, wonderful stewed zucchini, and tea.

We finished lunch around 2.30 PM and by then it was starting to rain (and it has rained continuously since then).  We decided to save Chateau Frontenac for tomorrow because we paid for a pass to the Museum of Civilization when we went to the Museum of New France yesterday and it closed at 5 PM, wasn't open on Monday (tomorrow) and, although it is right across the street from our hotel, we probably wouldn't have time Tuesday morning before going to the airport.

The Museum of Civilization, like the Museum of New France, is visually stunning and engaging.  The emphasis is on Native American culture and the land and people of Quebec, but there is also a Japanese exhibit, an extra admission Samurai exhibit (which we did not see), and even a Nigerian art exhibit.  The Native American exhibit was very interesting and featured some wonderful artifacts and reproductions- including a 30-foot birch bark canoe!  The exhibit on the land and people of Quebec was visually the most spectacular.  As you walk from display to display, the display on the floor is the St. Lawrence and you are flanked on both sides by illuminated curtains depicting scenery of the landscape.  In the middle of each section is a round table with a video screen in the center and picture scenes around the edges with text information in both French and English.  No real museum pieces in this section on the land, but visually engaging displays.

After the museum, we chilled at the hotel for a while before finally deciding on a plan for dinner - which got nixed!  After much deliberation, we found a place that sounded good, was casual, had great reviews on Yelp and Travel Advisor, but most importantly was only 100 m from the hotel - a short walk in the nasty weather.  But, alas, it was closed.  Whether it was closed on Sundays or only open for lunch, I don't really know, but I think the former because some of the reviews sound like people went in the evening. 

Anyway, from there it was a short walk to the bistro next to the Asian place where he had dinner the night before (tasty, but not exactly what I would call Thai curry...  Had the same beer as I had at lunch today.  However the owner's daughter was running the place last night and she was delightful.  Came and chatted with us for a while and made us feel right at home!), which I had thought was the Belgian bistro we saw on the way to the hotel from the airport, but it was not.  It was called Bistro Brigante and was essentially a gastro pub.  Reminded me some of The Three Muses in New Orleans, although it had traditional table service (rather than order at the bar) and no live music.  It wasn't very crowded, so it was small, quiet and cozy, and really quite romantic - in fact there was a young French speaking couple there on a date.  The menu was eclectic with appetizers ranging from nachos to a real Greek salad and a local cheese plate.  We shared a cheese plate to start and, other than the blue cheese which neither of us like, it was quite good.  Then we both had the salmon, which was wonderful.  Topped with capers and olives and served on rice with some zucchini on the side.  There was some sauce on it, but not much, and the fish was delightful.  Lisa had another Cheval Blanc and I had the pilsner from a Quebec brewery called Innobrou, which was excellent - arguably the best beer I have had on the trip so far.  We did really well for meals today despite picking places at random!