The Summer of the Goat

Batisse the 10th
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Monday was “Tour Québec City” day. 

Beginning of the Day Farce in Which We Cannot Find the Entrance to the Biggest (Literally) Attraction in the City:  We had determined to begin our day at the Citadelle, a fortress dating back to the 17^th century, home of the 22me Régiment, and guarded by guards authorized, since 1955, to wear the official Royal Uniform of Red Coat and Bearskin Hat—just like Buckingham Palace.  It is an active military garrison, but at 10:00, they do a changing of the guard ceremony open to the public, involving, get this, the company mascot:  a goat.  Named Batisse.  I am not making this up; see photos for proof.  After the ceremony there are guided tours.  From the map, it appeared that we could get off the bus, take a nice, leisurely walk down the riverfront boardwalk, and enter the Citadel from the riverside.  Turns out, that there is a nice leisurely stroll down a riverfront boardwalk, but that is then followed by a rather more rigorous schlep up 310 steps on the Governor’s Walk (still boardwalk and still riverfront) to get to the top of the hill, followed by the discovery that the entrance to the Citadelle is nowhere near there, and you have to go back down into town.  So around and around we walked, finally discovering the entrance up a winding street.  (Turns out this is on purpose—they don’t WANT the entry to be easily accessible.  Makes a certain amount of sense, I have to admit.)  We had gone about 270 degrees around the Citadelle—definitely NOT the most efficient route. 

Beginning of the Day Farce in Which We Cannot Find the Entrance to the Biggest (Literally) Attraction in the City

Down the River from the Top of The Citadelle
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Hot and tired already, we arrived just as the ceremony started, so fortunately nothing lost.  WE may have to go back and try the Governor’s Walk again tomorrow, though, so as to take it a little more slowly and possibly actually LOOK at the scenery.

The ceremony takes about 35 minutes, involves a good bit of marching around on the parade ground by the Old Guard, to be relieved, the New Guard (who does not become officially the new guard until thoroughly inspected and declared ready for duty—the Old Guard, in fact, does not make its appearance until the New Guard is declared), a large military band, and the goat and his handler.  It’s rather impressive, though I spent some time wondering how the heck anybody made up all this choreography.  I mean—most of it doesn’t appear to have any particular purpose,  so who stood around on the parade ground and said to himself, “Okay.  So after we get the solo trumpeter to blow the whatever call, then we’ll have the New Guard march over to that part of the parade ground and stop on there for a bit”?

Down the Funicular
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The burning question, of course, is “Why a goat?”  Turns out:  the ancestor goat was given (as part of a herd) to Queen Victoria in 1884 as a gift from Persia.  Someone or another (this bit is not explained in the museum where Batisse the 4^th of the 22me Régiment is stuffed and on display) kept the goats going for about 60 years until Queen Elizabeth II decided to bestow one, Batisse the 1^st to the 22me Régiment as a gift.  Personally, I think she must have taken a dislike to someone in charge of the Regiment and thought it would be a lark to stick him with a goat.  Since it was the queen’s goat, they naturally couldn’t just roast the thing and eat it, so for the past 54 years they’ve been making the best of things by breeding it and carrying on a line of regimental mascots, all dressed in blue with gold horns and a thingy-doodle on its head.

Chateau Frontenac
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The thing about having a large, long-haired goat in the ceremony is that that’s pretty much all the tourists look at (maybe that’s the point).  No problem there, except that goats, being what they are, are prone to doing their goatly business without warning and whenver they feel like it.  So this ceremony was interrupted at one point by Batisse making a goatly offering.  That might not be of even passing interest, except that this goat makes a production of the thing.  Not content with a discreet little sideline activity, he raised his tail, shot out an impressive collection, then, spectacularly, shook himself all over like a big wet St. Bernard.  He finished with a large, satisfied, shake of the head.  No one could miss this display.  I bet that happens most days.

Boardwalk Along the River
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Query:  which of the poor schlumpfs in the bearskin hats gets Doot Duty at the end of the ceremony?

The tour was quite interesting, and included spectacular views over the city and down the river (see photos), as well as the firing, at noon, of a modern cannon.  They shoot blanks, but we allowed as how it might be more interesting if they shot a live round once in awhile.

After lunch (and a short rain break), we headed off to the Musée de Civilisation.  Liz had recommended this, and I have to second the recommendation.  The museum features a number of galleries about Québecoise history, intermingled with a number of temporary exhibits.  Yesterdays’ temporary fare included an exhibit called “Extra Terrestrials:  What if they were real?”  This included an eclectic mish-mash of images of aliens from popular fiction (including, of course, E.T.), heavily weighted toward the alien from Alien, and a “real science” section which featured two imaginary planets for which “they” had asked scientists to imagine potential living inhabitants.  This was whimsical, but I was having trouble working out the difference between that and science fiction.  There was also an exhibit on exciting mummies from Egypt (we skipped this, as the child-under-age-10 density was about 15/square foot), and an exhibit on “Leisure Time.”  This was quite perplexing, as it appeared to consist mainly of a huge collection of balls of various types and a less huge collection of shoes.  Go figure.

Changing of the Guard at the Citadelle
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The Québec galleries are quite interesting; my favorite bit was a gigantic birch bark canoe, accompanied with video of an artisan making one.  I also learned something I might have realized but never would have thought of:  the first huge wave of immigration into Canada was from the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution.  The loyalist citizens were looking for somewhere to live under British rule.

In between all those, we rode up and down the Funicular (the whole city is on a steep hill, so getting from place to place involves climbing a whole bunch of stairs or trudging up hills, but there is one funicular—so almost-straight-up-and-down that it might as well be an elevator), and darted into various cafés to get out of the rain.  It only rained a couple of times during the day, but when it did, it was heavy and steady and cold. 

The bus that did NOT show up
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End of the Day Farce:  To get into town from the hotel (which is about 7 or 8 miles out), we took a free shuttle from the hotel down to the Place D’Armes in front of the Chateau Frontenac (see photo of massive, magnificent, imposing building) where we were given a ticket for the ride back and told to be right there at the same place at 1800 hours, which even I can translate back into 6:00 p.m.  As it happened, at 1730, it was raining hard, the wind was blowing, and it was colder than it had been all day.  We took refuge in a café on the Place D’Armes, and at 1752 went out to wait for the shuttle.  It did not come.  There were several other buses standing at the curb, and a few more went by, but nothing like the one we came on (which was a small green bus that said “gratuit” on it; we can follow that one without knowing French).  Worrisome observation: the other people who came with us on the free shuttle in the morning were nowhere to be seen, leading us to deduce that the blasted thing came early and left early.  Twenty minutes passed during which we got colder, wetter, and crankier.  There was no Plan B, for one thing, and for another, we had a dinner reservation for 1845 in the hotel restaurant.  Being there mattered, because it involved a special dinner deal which only applied before 7:00 and with a reservation.

Place Royale
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While we stood there, we saw two full-sized buses plainly marked  “Tour de Vieux Québec”—we had seen these all day-- but we wanted to go back to the hotel; we did not want an evening tour of Vieux Québec.  There were also two or three other charters that came by.  At 18:10, we phoned the hotel for information.  After an absurd sequence of efforts, one of which involved the clerk putting me on hold for 5 minutes at 60 cents extra per minute, we elicited the information that the shuttle comes to the Place D’Armes at 1800.  Joy.  Her idea was that perhaps it was stuck in traffic, and we could either wait there or we could catch the “other shuttle,” which costs $3 per person and runs every 15 minutes. 

Cafe
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Query:  Where do we catch the other shuttle?

Query back:  Do you have a pencil?

Answer:  No.  Please just explain it.

Answer:  Well, it’s at a place called the Musée de Civilisation.

Response:  Expletive deleted.

As it seemed pointless to stand there in the windy cold and rain waiting for the Godot bus, we walked BACK to the Musée de Civilisation, and engaged in another round of farcical information asking, involving wrong information from the information desk in the museum and more wrong information from the bus driver of the bus that the information clerk told us to get but which did not go where we needed to go, we ended up on the “shuttle” which was not what we would call a shuttle, but rather a regular Québec city bus.  The number 400, to be precise.  (It did run every 15 minutes, though.) 

The Kicker:  Our bus dropped us virtually at the door of the hotel after a 10-minute ride (compare 35 minutes for the morning shuttle), just ahead of the arrival of the full-sized bus marked Tour de Vieux Québec.  Unreal.

So:  in giving instructions, neither the desk clerk at the hotel who told us about the shuttle nor the driver of the morning shuttle who gave us directions about where to pick up the evening shuttle nor the clerk at the hotel who talked to me when I called to ask what was the deal with the evening shuttle thought it was pertinent to mention that the bus wouldn’t be the same bus that took us in the morning—or even another bus from the same company—but would, instead, be cleverly disguised as a tour bus offering to take us toddling around the old city.  Wackadoodle.  We can do the math, though:  we caught the #400 42 minutes after the shuttle was supposed to pick us up, and we still beat it back.  Free shuttle is eliminated as Plan A.  Tomorrow we take the #400; it’s a much better deal!

All aggravation was made up for by dinner, though.  Having arrived a full minute before 7, we were still eligible for the hotel guest dinner deal, and I had a delicious cream of vegetable soup (which we had actually had the night before and knew to be a sure thing) followed by a stuffed chicken breast (interestingly entitled “Blank de Volaille” which literally translated means “the white thing that flies”) which was worth all the trouble.

Tomorrow:  back to Vieux Québec for the remaining sights.  Well, some of them.