Quebec

The first time we struggled with the language was in Trois Rivieres, on the way from Montreal to Quebec.  Fortunately coffee and doughnuts weren't too difficult to order, and it was generally pretty straight forward from then onwards.  Certainly when speaking to people they always switched to English after our initial attempts (somehow school standard French of being able to discuss our favourite school subjects and the colour of our brother's dog seemed a little inconsequential when faced with a menu and hovering waiter, or a self-service petrol station!!).

If Montreal was "North American",77 then Quebec was truly "European" with it's narrow winding streets, small parks and squares.  We were both really looking forward to Quebec as we had booked ourselves into the hotel in town (Chateau Frontenac overlooking the confluence of the St Charles and St Lawrence rivers) and were looking forward to utter luxury.

Certainly the Chateau didn't disappoint.  We arrived fairly late in the evening and headed straight out to dinner.  The first place we found was a small open-air restaurant which couldn't have had a nicer location as it overlooked the leafy square with the central fountain, all of which was tastefully floodlight - fantastic, oh and the food was great.

The following day we thought that the best way to see the old town, without maximum effort, was to do the tourist thing and have a horse-drawn guided tour.  We have to admit that we tried to stick within the old town walls as far as possible, not for fear of attack by the French, but to avoid coming across the newer areas of the city which would spoil the unique feel to the place.  Anyway the tour took us round the town, prominent buildings (Parliament etc) and out to the Plains of Abraham where the English, under General Wolfe, finally took Quebec from the French in 1759.  There was a memorial adjacent to the hotel commemorating Wolfe and his French counterpart General Montcalm, both of whom were killed in the battle.  To avoid offending either the French of English speaking community the inscription was written in Latin.  

On our third day in Quebec we headed northeast along the northern bank of the St. Lawrence to a town called Ste-Anne-de-Beaupre; home of the Basilique de Ste-Anne-de-Beaupre - the Canadian equivalent of Lourdes.  Just north of the town was the Canyon Ste-Anne, where the river has cut a gorge, including a 74m high waterfall, into the rock.  Apart from the deluge of rain which welcomed us the weather was beautiful for our walk round.  There is just one photo below but the views, both of the waterfall and downstream towards the south, were fantastic - even the rope bridge 50m up over the canyon.  From the park we headed back to the town for a short tour round the Basilique before back to the Hotel.

On our final day we decided to explore one of the more dominant features of the city: The Citadel. The Citadel is both a tourist attraction and an operational barracks, historically as importantly it's also home to the Royal 22nd Regiment (known as the Vandoos), the first French speaking regiment in the Canadian army.  Home to the ceremonial changing of the guards and a detailed military history there was, unsurprisingly, a fair amount of information on the English-French wars.  Not wanting to loose too much time around the Citadel we headed out onto the Plains of Abraham, scene of the 20min battle.

The French had defended the remainder of the coastline around the Quebec area well but had left the plains only lightly defended as these could only be reached by scaling the near unclimbable Heights of Abraham, about 1km from the Citadel.  Battle for 20mins, French lose, Quebec surrenders 5 days later - Hurrah!

From Quebec we, very reluctantly, climbed into the car and headed back towards Toronto on the start of our return leg.