Quebec City, Quebec

Today is a travel day. We're flying from Halifax to Quebec City via Montreal - so that's 2 plane trips.  We get to the airport about 2 hours early to give plenty of time to return the car and check in.  Car returned with no problems, sad to see our little PT Cruiser go but she's served us well in her 4,000km trip around the Maritimes.

Checking in doesn't go as smooth. Even though we're reasonbly early it seems we're stuck on "standby" for the flight from here to Montreal. We're not terribly happy as we have to make the connecting flight to Quebec City. The Air Canada service person is very nice and explains that they commonly "over sell" seats - something we express shock about seeing we've got a confirmed booking.  It's just not something we're used to in Oz.  He tells us there's about 13 extras on this flight and usually they try and ask for volunteers to take another flight (either later or via another route). If that doesn't happen they nominate people to bump off though we should be okay cos we have that connecting flight.

So we wait patiently to find out if we're on...and just before boarding we get the good news though we're not sitting together. At this stage we don't particularly care!

The rest of the travels go without incident. We get to our room midafternoon.  It's quite small but nicely appointed and the main thing is the room looks towards the old city. The hotel is only 50 metres from the wall that still surrounds the old city.  The gate here is one of the oldest still standing (200+ years old).

Susan is unwell (yes, again) so we sort out a tour for the next day and then spend the rest of the afternoon/evening in our room. We both appreciate the rest.

Next day we're ready for our tour. It's a cold day - about 10 degrees celius. A lot colder then we're used to in the Maritimes.  Even though it's not overly cold the wind is very very cold and we estimate it's really about 5 degrees. Brrr...

All rugged up we first go on a boat to tour the harbour for about 90 mins. The highlight is Montmorency Falls, higher then Niagara but clearly not as wide nor as spectacular. Although we don't get very close it is still an impressive sight - thousands of people flock here to see them and ride the cable car to the top or bottom depending on which way you head! :-)

We are then transferred to Chateau Frontenac to wait for our the city part of the tour. The Chateau is the most recognised icon of Quebec. It stands high on the cliffs along the river overlooking the lower (and older) part of the old city.

We have a 1 hour wait here so grab some lunch from the Bistro in the Chateua. Unfortunately there were no free seats inside (mostly due tothe cold but also the large number of tourists) so we head outside in the cold. It's unbearably cold so once we're done we head to the Visitor Information Centre along with many other people to get out of the wind.

Our tour starts eventually, not before our incompentant driver has to recheck everyone's tickets to make sure we're on the right bus.  The tour is good and gets us to a few places that we wouldn't have been able to get too including:

Parliament House: where the treaty of a united Canada was signed (even though the "birth" of Canada is Charlottown, PEI).

Battle Fields: where the British surprised the French (yes, yet another battle) by coming up the river, landing in an area the French thought was impenetrable and therefore didn't have many soldiers located there. The British eventually won, but not before Colonel's from both sides died.

Oldest Street & Buildings in North America: cobblestoned street with a few original buildings (very well preserved) in the lower part of the old city.

Funicular: a cable car between the lower old city and the upper old city right near the Chateau Frontinac.

After our tour we walk back to the hotel through the old city visiting almost all of the souvenier shops along here til we found a couple of t-shirts that we liked! On the way back we walked up the gates at St John (the ones nearest our hotel) and along part of the old wall. It's hard to imagine that what we were doing had been done by people hundreds of years ago - perhaps for different purposes than us!

We've had a long day so we have a drink in the lounge and opt to eat in the hotel's restaurant - very nice. Off to the room to get some sleep before we head to Montreal.