Quebec City

After a year and a half of COVID lockdowns, I've been in a frenzy of doing fun activities and getting out as much as possible. The final big event after our summer of beaches, visitors, and camping was to go to Quebec City, Quebec and Saint John, New Brunswick.The original trip was supposed to be to Quebec City then to Boston, but with all the COVID testing still required at the border, we decided to just stay in Canada. This first post will just cover all the pictures we took in Quebec, then I'll do a separate post on New Brunswick. 

We started our trip leaving the house a little after 6 am to drive about 8 hours. We stopped a few times along the way. A lot of the towns up in this area were founded by loyalists who fled the U.S. around the time of the Revolutionary War. I haven't done a lot of research on the history, but Austin took some photos.

This is the bridge to the US- which we can't cross unless we have a COVID test done for everyone on the way there and the way back- yuck!

Here is a little park along the Saint Laurence River where we stopped to have lunch

The girls were still in their nightgowns, but it made the travelling more comfortable for them.

Here is Leif in the living room of the little house we stayed in.

Here is the outside of the house. We were surprised at first at the alligator, but many of the houses in the area have graffiti and some of them, like this one, were done intentionally. The area we stayed in was full of little houses stuck together on one-way streets: very reminicient of Europe and very convenient for walking everywhere. We were close enough to the Old City of Quebec City that we could walk there easily and have plenty of interesting places to stop along the way.

Many of these photos aren't in exact order because some are from my phone and most are from our camera, and I didn't want to spend the time putting them in perfect chronological order.

Coming at the end of September was perfect- it was cool enough to be comfortable walking all day and the main tourist season was over.

The big castle building in the background is the Chataue Frontenac. Its an expensive hotel right inside of the Old City.

All of the Old City looks just like classic Europe and reminded me so much of Italy, although of course its all really well taken care of for tourist purposes. French is the main language spoken here, but because of tourism, most people speak some English. It was fun to hear the French and learn a little of it ourselves, although if we actually lived in Quebec, I'd make much more of an effort for our whole family to learn the language well.

The cannons were here as part of the fortifications of the Old City (the city is also surrounded by walls) and the kids loved playing on them through out our stay.

This is the parlement buiding.

Another photo of our house and the pink house across the street (Natalie liked that one!)

This is a place called the Plains of Abraham where a battle was fought (again, I didn't look much into the history yet) and where a military base is still located. 

Heidi was extremely interested in trying Cotton Candy- enought that we hiked all over the place trying to find the store where we had seen it earlier in the day and she was willing to spend her own allowance money on it. She loved it at first, but afer awhile, she was passing it out trying to get rid of it because it was too sweet.

Lots more pictures of the Chataue Frontenac.

Here's the little place we found to stop and have lunch. Natalie was glad to get out of the backpack for awhile and I was glad to get to sit down a bit.

Here is a gate in the walls- there are several of them and I think we passed though them all at one point or another in all our wanderings.

We had to drive to get to the Aquarium, but it was well worth the trip. There was hardly anyone there, it was clean and well maintained, and the animals were easy to see. Leif was very impressed with it because they said that only kids 10 and older had to wear masks inside, so Asher was our only kid required to do it.

Natalie was most impressed by the rays that we were able to pet as they swam by in their little pool. She was afraid at first, but once I finally got her to do it, she loved it and for days afterward, wanted to pretend she was a baby ray and have me pet her softly on the back with two fingers.

I loved seeing the walruses. We got to watch them being fed and swimming all around.

We also saw the seals being fed. The seals were so adorable to watch with their scooting and rolling into the water. Heidi, Trevor, and Natalie were inspired to pretend that they are seals with one of them being a seal trainer, throwing fish to the other two.

There were little arctic foxes there too- although I'm not sure how they have anything to do with an aquarium.

The owls were cool too, although, again, not really related to an aquarium.

There was a really cool play area where the kids enjoyed getting out some wiggles.

And the pond area was interesting and fun too.

We loved watching these polar bears- two adolescent brothers who spent the whole time wrestling in the water. We teased Trevor that he was part polar bear, based on the color of his hair.

We also went to a place called Montmorency Falls- which is a big waterfall with a bridge across it and some trails to hike around on.

Everyone was melting down by this point, including Austin (which is very rare), so we headed home for some dinner and to watch a movie and get packed up for our drive to Saint John the next morning.

 

In the morning before I had to sit in the car again for hours, I went on a walk all over the old city and was amazed at all the placed I was able to get to in an hour without having to drag anyone around with me ;). I walked past the Chataue Frontenac again and up to the Plains of Abraham again, by the parliment building, by lots of tourist shops, and through the streets of the neighborhoods, with a final stop at a bakery that was just opening, where I bought the kids some French pastries to go along with their breakfast.