Quebec City is considered the “most European city” in North America and title is well deserved. The
old Quebec City city area was much bigger than expected – with the upper town and lower town seperated by a 250 foot cliff. We got more steps in Quebec City than any of the days hiking in national parks.
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We spent about a day or two longer in Quebec City than our normal pace which worked out well with some rain out days and provdied some time for a sponatous day trip outside of Quebec City – and also provided a time window for Annelise to join for a couple of days.
After our 7 hour ferry came into port in North Sydney, Nova Scotia on Tuesday evening, we still had 12 hours of driving to get to Quebec City. We broke it up over a couple of days and made some short stops along the way and stayed one of the nights in Rivière-du-Loup – a really nice town with a pretty impressive waterfall in the center of town. We found a good rail-trail for a little biking as well that paralleled the highway and St. Lawerance seaway. Rivière-du-Loup was also our first introduction to Quebec – everything in French and our waitress was just learning English (but still much better than our French).
Upper Town
We stayed in the upper town but since there was no parking available, we had to park about a mile away in the newer area of town – similar to St. John limited places to park with the rooftop box. The newer area of town is seperated from old Quebec City by a fortress wall built by the French to defend against the English in the late 1700s – the attack never came. The upper town should be a clue of the hills/cliffs are a prevelent part of old Quebec City – between the cliff down to the river and the hills cutting across the upper town, it seemed every direction was up a hill. We were on the main street in the Upper Town – Rue St. Louis (which changes to Grande Allee which leaving old Quebec City) which runs parallel to the main commerical street Rue Saint John (which is still in the upper town, but 100 feet down a hiil). Everything in the old city looks like it was from the 1700 to 1800s – very impressive and it was only a short walk down to the Chateau Frontanec which is on the edge of the cliff. Between a self-guilded walking tour Sharon and Annelise’s foodie tour, we got a good sense of the area and history. We did go into the Chateau Frontanec for a quick bit, but generally they didn’t allow tourists in most of the day and one of our fancy resturants – La Buchette was in the Upper Town. Annelise joining forced us to up our game a bit with our dinners out.
Lower Town
Initially, we thought the lower town was limited to a few streets – Rue du Petit Champlain being the main one and Place Royale the other main site which is the exact location where Samuel de Champlain founded the city. But the longer we were there, the more places we found to go and explore further. Between finding the one time of the year that the art galleries were open in lower town at night for an annual festival and visiting another nice resturant, we found a lot more to see. Probably would not have had the time to stumble on to some of these streets had we only been there a couple of days. The lower town is considerably older than the upper town – a lot of places from the early 1600s. Rue du Petit Champlain is probably the most picturesque street in Quebec City.
The disadvantage of lower town is that it is literally lower – picture below has one set of stairs (you can’t see the top of the stairs) versus the preferred method of the funicular ($5 a trip!).
Modern Quebec City
On the other side of the wall is modern Quebec City, where we parked (a couple of times) – split between the traditional downtown with provisional government buildings and the Plains of Abraham battlefield. The battlefield is on a plateau with the cliff straight down to the river – which meant that is saw many different battles from different wars. The last was in mid-1700s and saw the British take final control from the French. Interesting that there are probably more places to eat and nightlife than the old city – but we really only walked through getting to our car.
Waterfalls and Wineries
With an extra day, we decided to take a day trip – there were several waterfalls recommended – two were about 1.5 hours and the third was 20 minutes – so we went to the closest – Chutes Montmorency. Much more impressive than we expected. Pro tip if you ever visit – they have two parking lots. We parked in the one at the bottom and had to take another 300 foot stair case – the other parking lot is at the top. One consistent element of the waterfalls was that an a dam had been added at the top to control flow and divert water for electricity generation – so all of them have an artifical straight edge across the top.
Annelise found a winery on an the l’Île-d’Orléans island near the waterfall – Vignoble Isle de Bacchus. Surprising that they had decent red wines and not all ice wines. We selected this winery because it was closest to the bridge – there are many on the island and it is worth a whole day on its own.
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