Total driven: 945 km
Breakfast at 7:30 am and on the move an hour later. We had some slow traffic crossing Montreal and when we were close to Quebec city. But what a change in temperature, yesterday in Ottawa it was 31 C with very high humidity. Today at lunch time it was 18C and raining.
We were in our hotel around 3 pm. Our Hotel is in the outskirts of the city, nothing fancy but clean and comfortable. we headed right away into the city and of course we were delayed by Friday afternoon traffic. We found parking easily and we entered the old city by the gate of St. Jean (St. John)
The city walls were buit to protect the city from the English. Now we know that at the end were not enough.
As we entered they were preparing for a musket demonstration with some young people in the uniforms of the era,
We viited the artillery park which has quite a few old cannons
There were quite a few flags of the province of Quebec
We managed a short visit to the cathedral basilica of Notre Dame du Quebec, the oldest church in North America north of Mexico. Built in the 1600s it has a European flavour, tomorrow we are planning to take the tour and attend Mass in the evening.
By then we were hungry and we found a nice outdoor restaurant with Italian food so we had a very nice dinner there.
We continued to the promenade and walk past the Hotel Frontenac
The is a statue there of Samuel de Champlain, the father of New France nad founder of Quebec city.
The promenade is above an escarpment with fantastic views of the mighty St. Lawrence river
On the promenade there is a Salvador Dhali piece: Alice in Wonderland
And down below, on the river there were a couple of Canadian coastguard ships
Then we took the stairway uo to the citadel, and yes, I went up the 400 plus steps, ignoring the bad knee
By then it was early evening so walked back to the car and passing in frony of the Hotel de Parlement (Quebec's legislature)
And then to the Hotel to rest.
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