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Dec 28 – This day was going to have the nicest weather of our stay in Québec City, so we decided to go to Montmorency Falls first. I was a bit miserable after such bad sleep the night before, so Tharash went out to a little bakery and got me a chocolate croissant, himself an almond croissant, and a cappuccino to split between both of us.

But we went to the train station to buy bus tickets, and I nearly managed to order them in French and understand the lady, but then she asked a question that was a bit confusing even when she switched to English (basically the number of fares we needed – four in total, for two people to go there and back).

It was a bit more difficult to get into the falls grounds than Google thought, because they only had one entrance open for winter. But anyway entry was $10 (but $17 to ride the cable-car, we found out later, so we didn’t do that). It was fascinating how the water trickling out of the layered stone cliff was freezing into lumps, forming into icicles even through the roots of trees. It was a bit slippery, naturally, even with my boots.

Taking pictures all the while, eventually we crossed the pedestrian bridge and found… a trail leading up the river. So we followed it for a bit. It was quiet and lovely, and we even saw a squirrel quite close.

Returning to the main falls grounds, we went into the manoir and had some tea from Tharash’s thermos and some of the cookies that my cousin gave us. Then I went to the gift shop and bought a postcard of the falls as seen in winter from below, so we really didn’t have to ride the cablecar.

Then we went back into town and went grocery shopping at a Metro (grocery store, not a metro station) near the train station, then went walking through the old upper city. They are also having a winter village in the old squares here; smaller squares than, say, Antwerp, but they had it in multiple squares – though not all of them had functional stalls. In fact it kind of seemed like most of them didn’t, in retrospect there was only a few drinks stalls, some live music, some art displays, and another skating rink. Bit of a weird Christmas ‘market’ if it’s not selling much. But it gave the squares a lively feeling, and there were lots of tourists wandering around, so I think it was still worth it.

We walked along Dufferin Terrace and observed the toboggan, which was something that I was interested in. The line up was, as you might expect, VERY long. Most people scream as they come down the hill, but there’s a textured surface for braking at the end of the very long chute, and a snow gravity brake hill past that in case you somehow didn’t stop by the end of that. We did not line up that day, but we went up the top of the hill where you can walk along outside the Citadelle. (I was planning to go actually line up for it later (though it was closed most of the next day for weather) but then the sickness showed and lineups in the cold sounded like a bad idea.)

Then we headed out through the wall to the Parliament Building, where there was some kind of EDM-ish music festival going on. Not a fan of the music, but the light show was okay.

Then we headed back down into town, to the Christmas market with the skating rink, and got some hot chocolate with a shot of I believe Amaretto liqueur, which was very yummy, and then there was live music from a fiddler/guitarist duo, love French-Canadian trad music so much. Actually at least two times on this trip walking past shops I heard the recording of La Bottine Souriante playing La p’tit porte-clé. Which is unrelated to the live music performance, but still noteworthy to me.

Since we’d been grocery shopping, Tharash wanted to do some of his own cooking on this trip – to save money, to be a bit healthier, and also because he likes cooking. He made a potato/egg dish in the hostel kitchen, though he found that the kitchen has no oven dishes or oven mitts. Luckily he’d gone for a package of potatoes that came with its own baking dish, and used a dishtowel to get it out. Though there was a slight mishap with the oven; he didn’t realize that Canadians bake in Fahrenheit (don’t ask) and so put it in for 30 minutes at 200 degrees and it was barely warm. So we rebaked it for another 30 minutes at 350 and then it was okay.

Québec City ended up being the place we took the most pictures, so I had to split it into two parts.

Next – Québec City 2