A taste of Europe...

Painting "Basilica of Sainte Anne de Beaupre "
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Once we got to Quebec City we checked into a motel called Motel Le Lucerne that we booked over the phone. It took us a while to check in as the lady at the reception didn’t seem to have our reservation and she spoke only in French and not a lot of English. We managed to finally get our key and put our bags in the room before scooting across the road to have a feed at the Les Artistes Restaurant. Where there was a huge painting a famous Basilica of Sainte Anne de Beaupre and so it was decided that we will check that out tomorrow. The rest of the night it was puking snow and we were lucky that we made it into Quebec earlier rather than later.

The snow dump in the morning
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The next morning we woke up to a huge dump of snow, the roads were covered; the car, the side walk was covered with at least 15cm of snow. Everything was all white again and looked rather like a winter wonderland but it was cold, very cold. We brushed the car off then checked out of the Motel, driving through town it was like a different city to all the other cities of Canada altogether, houses were a lot smaller and older looking. Even the people, there seemed to be a much larger French influence and presence about the place as even the road signs and street names were in French. We drove down the small streets leading up to the Sainte Anne Basilica. It was magnificent in structure; it was so massive that I couldn’t even fit the building into a picture I was taking. Shortly after touring the inside of the Basilica we stopped of at the St Lawrence River then heading into the old city – Vieux Quebec. It was like a European fairytale as we parked our car just inside the fortress walls of the old city and walked, the streets were narrow, cobblestoned with shop windows on either side, xmas decorations only to bring out the liveliness of the city. We walked around inside the wall and checking out the glamorous Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac, the Marguerite Bourgeoy’s museum at the Notre Dame Chapel, then down the famous street rue du Petit Champlain which is a narrow but extremely decorated street with xmas trees and lights on either side and in store fronts and Restaurants where we ate a serving of spicy sausages with some salad and chips before making our way to the top of the Citidel that was completely covered in knee deep snow. Then making our way outside the walls to check out the Choco Musee, a chocolate shop and museum learning all there is about chocolate and it’s history before treating ourselves to a nice cup of hot chocolate as it seemed to be the perfect weather for it. Then it was time to bid a farewell to Quebec as we jumped in the car to our next destination. Montreal.