Quebec Day #6- Exploring Quebec City

I LOVE Quebec City. Even in the rain.

We woke up to a gloomy day… sad but we have had perfect weather so far on this trip so I guess we can suffer for a day! We had plans to visit the Citadelle for the changing of the guard but it was cancelled due to the rain. We walked down to the ferry (our Airbnb is up on a hill so we have been walking down and taking a $7 cab up to avoid the billion stairs).

Even with the clouds, we are still smiling! We went to a restaurant called L’Omelette for mimosas and eggs benny!

We then headed to the Citadelle headquarters with an umbrella for backup and walked around the Plains of Abraham. Today ended up being a history themed day which was completely unplanned. We really had no plans and that made it great because we stumbled upon so many neat things. The Battlefields Park was huge and had a great viewpoint of the St. Lawrence River. We wanted to go inside the Citadelle but it was a fee of $16 and we were okay not going inside.

We kept walking and came to the Parliament Building which is gorgeous. The gardens outside were beautiful and the fountain out front was incredible. It was so humid but it hadn’t rained on us yet which was good!

It was so hot!! I wanted to jump into the fountain! We stopped at a cute Irish pub for a cold beer which was SO good.

While we were sitting on the patio, one of Phoenix’s relatives commented on her Facebook post that there was a museum that they really enjoyed while they were in Quebec. We looked it up and it was only a 7 minute walk from where we were.

We didn’t end up going inside the actual museum but we walked around the free areas and learned about Marie Incarnation, a woman who spread Catholicism in the Ursaline order to New France and who took in Indigenous girls and taught them how to be wives and be accustomed to French practices. She created the first school for girls in the New World (which later became Canada). So this whole area had been a convent since the 1600s! It was neat walking through the buildings and seeing where they lived, worshipped and learned. Only last year did the nuns who were still here move to a different location.

It was pretty cool to see all of the history there. Next we went inside the Chateau Frontenac and found a nice dog who lives there!

It was no longer rainy and the sun was in full force! We found an underground castle right in front of the Chateau Frontenac. It was a castle in the 1600s where the Governer lived; it burnt down and they built the Chateau Frontenac basically on top of it. From up top while you are walking along the Dufferin Terrace, there are clear windows so you can look down and see below. It only cost about $3 to go down and walk through the remains and it was nice and cool underground.

We walked along the Terrasse in front of the castle which is a gorgeous walk.

We just kept on walking and finding beautiful things. There are cannons everywhere! You can picture back in the day when the British would come on their boats to take over Quebec and all the French would shoot at the boats with the cannons etc. There is SO much history in this place.

We were starving by now so we went for an amazing fondue dinner right beside the Chateau! We had cheese, oil then chocolate and it was unreal Phoenix had never had fondue before so it was fun seeing her so happy to eat something new!

We went back to the ferry and had a beautiful ride across while the sun was setting. As we were waiting to leave, a HUGE shipping boat came past and it was insane. I don’t know why I was so excited about the ship, but I felt like a little kid. Pictures don’t do it justice!

We went back to the concert in Lévis for a bit then walked all the way up top to our Airbnb. We were SOAKED from the hike and the humidity. We stopped at an ice cream shop recommended to us by our Airbnb host.