We had a quiet start to the day where we woke up feeling warm and sweaty. It’s warm here but worse is the 86% humidity. We should have slept with the window open and more fans on. We will be sure to make corrections for tonight’s sleep. And while we know it’s the 4th of July in America, we are in Canada and they don’t celebrate that up here, so we had a full day planned of sites to see!
Around 10am the four of us headed out while Grams and Papa stayed back and enjoyed some Netflix and rest. We ventured to Old Quebec which is home to loads to old French inspired buildings and lots of shops for the constant tourism. We continued to walk and enjoy the scenery. The sun was blazing today and 3/4 of us forgot sunglasses so there was a lot of squinting and searching for the shady side of the street. The biggest showstopper in town is the Chateau Frontenac (the Fairmont) which is a fancy hotel that Winston Churchill and Grace Kelly would frequent. It sits up on a hillside and looks down on the harbor and the St. Lawerence River. There is even a little ski lift of sorts to take you up or down depending on which way your legs aren’t willing to walk.
We opted for walking down a few flights of stairs and then treated ourselves to calorie rich foods for more sustenance and energy. We found not one, but two cruise ships docked in the bay and it seems like that results in a lot of foot traffic through these quaint streets.
We found shops with every trinket imaginable, plus lots of Snoopy figurines and even a store with Disney Loungefly bags. It was tempting since our US dollar is 75 cents to the Canadian dollar. In my mind, always happy to find a sale, that’s like everything being 25% off!
What’s fascinating about this town and the entire Quebec province, is that there is such a strong French influence but it is on the decline. Only 71% of families are speaking French at home now but still 95% of the Quebec population speak French and it’s their official language. We thought this graphic was cool because we love learning about places we’ve never visited.
So we aren’t big followers of the UK but we learned that King Charles is the King of Canada…and 14 other “Commonwealth” areas: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and the United Kingdom. For the most part it’s nothing more than a title, but it’s hard to change these things so he still has the label for his bumper sticker. King of 15 countries. Flex much?
After finding some Asian bites for lunch which included pad Thai and some spring rolls, we took a 20 minute walk up some very unwelcome hills back to the AirBnB to catch up with Grams and see if she needed any help corralling Papa. Our afternoon was then spent with movies and games, a little work, snacking, maybe a nap for me, etc.
And then we starting contemplating dinner. After getting ourselves ready, perusing Yelp, and taking into account the direction that we wanted to travel, we settled on an Italian place called Ciccio’s. The only problem with dinner was the location from our AirBnB. Unfortunately when you use Google Maps walking directions, it’s not terribly clear what the elevation will entail and we neglected to see that there was an entire block of stairs included in the 10 minute walk.
Despite the initial discomfort, the sweating, and the huffing and puffing, once we cooled down with string AC and ice water, the food was amazing. The service was fantastic. And we all left very happy.
You can tell from the shadows in those photos that these are not professional shots. These are “oops I already took a bite hurry up and snap a photo” pictures. We thought long and hard about how much we could fit in our bellies, and decided on sharing a salad and an entree per couple. Todd and I got the lemon and pepper spaghetti and the table enjoyed the tasting bites that we allowed. Sharing was such a great idea because we leave town tomorrow morning and don’t want leftovers. We pretty much licked the plates and moved on to dessert. The sorbet was amazingly fresh and while the crème brûlée was a petite portion, it was delicious. There was even a bottle of Barbera shared by a few of us and a Moscow mule was ordered by the youngest member of our group.
We then got up some energy and mapped the 21 minute walk to the Fairmont so Grams and Papa could see the main attraction here in Quebec City. We enjoyed watching the people and seeing some boats and jet skis in the St. Lawerence River.
We thought about walking another 20 minutes back to our beds, but quickly decided that a $15 Uber minus 25% because our American money goes so far here…was too good to pass up. Our Uber driver had just brought people up from Montreal! That’s a 3 hour drive away!!! We were amazed. Wow. He didn’t seem to know the streets very well but you know, that’s what iPhone maps are for. We had a delightful 8 minute drive back to our place and tipped the man well as the poor guy had to drive all the way back to Montreal at some point. Perhaps we’ll see him in Montreal because that’s our destination tomorrow.
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