Zero Day - Quebec City, QC

Date: Wednesday, August 16, 2023

This post should be shorter than others because I spent about half the day blogging!  That's right, I was in Quebec City and rather than seeing the sights and buying a baguette and sitting on some enchanted little street and enjoying the sights and really living my life I was sitting in a chair starting at 8:00am and staring at a screen and banging out thousands upon thousands of words as I just let the experience flow through me and out onto the keyboard because they want more content to read and you people make me sick and I hope you're happy and reading every miserable word of it and laughing at the jokes and crying at whatever it is that gets to you people these days because I am a husk at this point and can't even remember what it was like to live a day without having to catalog every detail to feed your appetite for adventure from the comfort of your home and you are probably just reading this on a phone so you don't get the full experience of the pictures without having to zoom waaaaaay in and pick out all those tiny details or maybe you just don't zoom in and wonder what I'm talking about all the time and keep scrolling until you see a picture that interests you and then scroll away again and I give and I give and I give and my doctor is begging me to stop he says "Please Jeremy you're losing calcium in your bones you can't keep this up!" but I tell him that my loyal followers need more stories and the adventure - like the spice of Arrakis - must flow and it doesn't matter to you does it but that's ok because I'm finally caught up on blog posts you guys so I won't have to bike around with this burden of knowing that I need to remember details from over a week ago and jot them down as soon as I stop pedaling and I feel so great being caught up and maybe everything is going to be ok and we really can have it all!!

Note: I wrote this for comedic effect.  It is not a cry for help!

So at about 1:30pm I had finally caught up on blog posts!  Skipper should get his own post here because while I was doing this he went out for a walking tour of Quebec City and it sounds like it was pretty interesting.  When he got back he had to wait about 30 minutes for me to finish the last post, but that's ok because the hostel we're staying at in Quebec City is quite large with some decent sitting areas.

We set off to explore the city!  As we walked we found a statue of a soldier that was quite prominent.  Turns out it was a memorial to the soldiers of The Boer War (1899-1902).  Many Canadian cities have memorials to this war, despite our playing a relatively minor role in it.  I explained to Skipper that when you have very little history...everything that happens becomes VERY important.  As it was one of the first wars we sent troops into as "Canada" it was memorialized heavily.

The first stop was The Citadelle of Quebec, the fort that protected the city and the St. Lawrence River from invasion.  It seems that after the British took over the biggest threat was from "The Americans" (I know, I'd never heard of them either) and so the fort kept being expanded and reinforced to protect against an invasion from the South.  They made two major attempts to take it, but we got the stick out of the cupboard and gave those rebellious apple pie eating Joes a damn good thrashing!

We did the Citadelle tour.  It took us around some of the more historic buildings on the grounds like the powder magazines, the jail, and a few of the fortified places that troops would have been in case of attack.

As the tour was ending a massive storm system started moving in and the clear skies became a dark purple as we watched the storm move up the St. Lawrence river at us.  At some point it started to rain and our tour guide stated to take us to shelter, but it was too late.  We still got wet.  As the Citadelle is still a working military instillation (home of the Van Doos!) we weren't allowed to just run anywhere for cover.

We spent some time looking at exhibits at an indoor section of the fort as it rained, and when we were finished reading about the history of Van Doos the rain was also finished.  We walked back to the hostel and grabbed some rain gear!

I put my rain jacket on and - of course - the rain stopped.  Not only this, but the skies cleared and it was surprisingly hot.  We walked to the Chateau Frontenac to read some displays about the history of the building.

Once done there we walked to a part of the city that wasn't Old Quebec.  It turns out that Old Quebec is to Quebec City what the Vegas Strip is to Las Vegas or Times Square is to New York City: a tourist trap.  Everything is twice as expensive as it should be, so we walked to a neighbourhood for Quebec City to experience some local fare.  Of course we found a place called "Poutineville" and could walk no further!

One beer and a poutine later, and we rolled out of there.  I navigated us towards a local ice cream shop and we took our sweet treat to a nearby park to eat.  Once done we enjoyed that great Quebec City tradition of walking up stairs to a higher part of the city!

We walked along in a cute little neighbourhood that looked so typically Quebec City.

While walking we stumbled upon an old church that has been converted into a city library.  We stepped in to investigate!  It was incredible.  Quebec has been doing a good job of preserving their churches as historical buildings and finding other uses for them.  As I've said previously in the blog, I love the idea of these buildings - once centers of their communities - being repurposed and still public places for gathering!

We walked back to the National Assembly, looked around, and then back to the hostel.  We dropped off the rain gear because it wasn't a problem anymore and took another walk along the boardwalk around the Chateau Frontenac overlooking the St. Lawrence River at night.  We watched ships go by and talked about the city, the rest of the trip, the trip so far, and sometimes nothing.  It was pretty perfect way to end Quebec City.

We walked back to the hostel, packed what we could, and turned in.

The next few days are predicted to be pretty rainy, so no guarantees on blog posts, but they'll be here eventually!  We're heading up the St. Lawrence to Mont Joli and then over to Campbelton, New Brunswick where we'll go down the Eastern coast of the province to Shediac and then to PEI.  It should be anywhere from a week to 8 days.  We're excited!