Quebec City

We departed Halifax under an expected overcast sky, with high hopes that the weather inland in Quebec City would be better. It was. It was sunny and hot, 30 degrees.

Quebec City was stunning, Old Quebec as beautiful a city as I’ve seen. Peaked roofs sprouting an abundance of chimneys, bay windows and colourful shutters, planters hung from sills. Gabbles galore, most buildings a slate grey or some hue of brick. The ages layered, but held at bay, but embraced, the modern hidden within. Gone were gas sputtering sconces, replaced with the even glow of electricity. Regardless what changes there were, there was a hint of old Europe around every corner, and one could easily forget one was in the New World when the echo of horse hoof met one’s ears. Like I said, it was beautiful, if you’re into such things and not a total neophile.

It was also full of people. The last weekend of the summer, labour day weekend, the streets were so full of Quebecois tourists that our cab had slowed to a crawl, no, a snail’s pace, as we thread our way through the narrow streets to our hotel on Rue du la Porte. Despite the tourists, Samuel du Champlain’s town still evoked images of wide hats, short pants and stockings and buckled shoes walking its cobbled streets. Most of the cobbles are gone now, replaced with the smoother ride of asphalt, but enough of them remained to remind one of its four hundred years of history.

We checked into the Chateau Belleview mid-afternoon, clouds forming overhead. Shit, I thought, it found us. And it did.

Shortly after checking in, we watched from our corner windows as buckets of rain pour down on those outside. They scampered and ran, finding refuge where they might, under arch, eave and limb. It abated after a short time, just long enough for us to believe that it was an isolated incident. It was not. We left the dry refuge of our quaint and comfortable room and ventured out to get a glimpse of the oldest city in Canada, only to be set upon by the rain gods shortly after passing under the stately elms of the Parc des Gouverneurs and rounding the Frontenac and taking in the hazy view from La Terrasse Dufferin. Clouds boiled overhead, the light dimming rapidly and we began to wonder about the wisdom of our having left the hotel. But we were on holiday, dammit, and there was no way we were going to spend it hiding in our room or drinking wine in the front lobby of our hotel, regardless of how cool it was that there was a dispensary machine there where we could buy it by the glass, the half litre, or the bottle. We ventured out, brave souls that we were, and hid under the awning of the Auberge du Tresor, drinking wine, watching those other few brave souls rush here and there across the Place d’Armes on their last day of holiday before returning to work, to school, to home. More buckets, more thunder and lightning, the awning filled to bursting, the waiters pushing the pools up and out onto the street and the gutters where they belonged. Wine, good food, coffee and dessert and it was sunny again, the humidity growing oppressive.

Le Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville Paris, by Robert Doisneau

A word about the Auberge du Tresor: across the Place d-Armes from the Frontenac, it was built in 1697 and is said to be the scene of the first French Kiss on this continent. Reason enough to duck in for a coffee and a kiss. I’m sure they won’t mind.

We shopped as the sunlight failed, then later followed the crowds down to the river to watch the Mill lightshow, an artistic theatre production projected onto the exterior of a collection of four wide and tall buildings across the St. Lawrence, depicting the four hundred years of Quebec’s history, much like those I’d seen before, on Ottawa’s Parliament Centre Block, on the Pyramids. Impressive, informative, cheap; free, in fact. We were caught in the rain as we scaled the hill back to the hotel, so we waited it out under the Frontenac’s arched entry, beginning to wonder if we’d every be free of it this trip.

We woke to a seemingly empty city the next morning. The crowds had left, departing for home, leaving only we few tourists. We few…there were crowds still, packed restaurants, amassed gatherings before buskers and artists and in the shops, but nothing like when we’d arrived. We were thankful of that.
An espresso and croissant on the Rue St. Jean before descending onto the Petite Champlain to stroll and shop the oldest streets in North America, lunch at Bistro Sous la Forte, before parting ways to explore, each on our own.

I discovered that climbing out of Lower Town takes some stamina, especially if climbing the stairs at the Post Office. I could have taken the gondola lift, true, but one must experience all things if one can. I did not climb those stairs again, by the way.

I bought my first hats at BiBi & Cie., Chapelier, 42 Rue Garneau, just up and around the corner from Cote de la Fabrique. Yeah, an impulse buy. But that’s where it all started, in case you were wondering. A pork pie, a stingy brim fedora and a crushable Christie.

We watched more street performers in late afternoon, ate at Le Retro, checked out the displayed art set all in a row and closed the day by horse-drawn carriage. We hired one of many at Place d’Armes, turned west at the Post Office and passed through the arch of the St. Louis Gate, returning on the Rue du St. Louis and ending when we began, eighty dollars for forty minutes. The sun had set, the city bathed in its light; it smelled of horse, obviously, the traffic a distant drone under the clip and clop of hooves as we rounded Old Town, exiting it, passing Parliament and the Battlefields of the Plains of Abraham. I loved the Gate, its high arch, the battlements and its copper roofed towers. It seemed out of place, and not, old, bur scrubbed clean and lit with arc lights, its upper flanks carpeted with sod.

Not a bad start.

And yes, the weather did improve.