Thursday, July 8- Quebec City - Julie a quarante ans'.

Bonjour! We think that the phrase, “Julie a quarante ans',” means, “Julie is 40 years old,” in French. It’s her birthday. Once we all woke up, we gave Mom her cards and presents. She got the DVD box set of Monk’s final season (which Anna and Emma will probably now enjoy watching as we drive), the recently released movie, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (which we had to stop her from buying at Borders yesterday), and a set of Nordic walking sticks like the kind we gave to Grandpa Frank.

Julie wanted to visit the old section of Quebec City today, so once we had a light breakfast, we drove into the city. Like many European cities, the old part of Quebec was laid out long before the advent of cars. As a result, there seems to be very little parking. We drove around the narrow cobblestone streets for a while and when we did find a lot, it was full. Eventually we found a metered lot, and found a nearby exchange office to get us enough loonies to pump the meter full for the day. We were near the walls, so we started our walking tour by climbing them and walking along their tops for a ways. Quebec is the only walled city in North America, and everything we toured today was inside these old defensive works.

It was a day of shopping, to be sure. We poked around countless gift shops and intriguing little boutiques. We had a real early lunch at McDonalds in order to fortify us for the exploration. As we explored, we admired the stone buildings and wonderful architecture. Scott pointed out a variety of things that he remembered from the two times he came here with the West Seneca East French students. For example, we went to an English showing of a 3D movie called “The Quebec Experience.” It was actually more than a movie, since various things came in real life to enhance the experience. Real water fell in the front of the theater, some images were projected onto a sail which was raised when the early explorers were discussed, and about a dozen muskets were lowered from the walls to fire when the battles of Quebec were covered.

While we were waiting for “The Quebec Experience,” we got to visit Scott’s favorite spot in Quebec City, the promenade along the side of the Chateau Frontenac. The Frontenac is the iconic building of the city, and is the building that Disney copied when they made the Canada pavilion at Epcot. We saw the toboggan run that is used in the winter, though it was too hot of a day to imagine snow here. Actually, the morning weather was very pleasant, in the 70s, but as the day wore on the heat rose.

We wound down to the lower part of town, and continued poking in shops as we went. We got to Scott’s second favorite spot, the Place-Royal, which is the oldest part of the city, and the Mural of the Quebecers which is a huge, realistic mural that shows many important people from Quebec’s history. It is a work of art that Scott has admired since his first trip here. Its certainly very complicated and detailed. Not surprisingly, he bought a booklet nearby about the details of the mural.

We made our way all the way down to the St. Lawrence River. By now the heat was starting to cook. We bought some bottles of pop, and later some gelato. We continued to poke in stores, but by now, we were working our way back up towards the upper part of the city. We rode the funicular to save us some of the climb. The girls started to watch a two person fire/acrobat show by the Chateau Frontenac, but the sun was baking and Emma was turning red. We ducked inside the Frontenac in order to cool off and find some restrooms. There were none that non-guests could use, so we left. We stopped at Chez Ashton for an early dinner. Here we were able to get a big dish of poutine, the Quebec favorite of French fries, cheese curds and gravy. We shared that, ate hot dogs, and drank a lot of pop and iced tea. Eventually, we made our way back to the walls of Quebec and the car.

We decided it was time to leave old town and return to the hotel. Traffic was quite bad because of construction and the rush hour. We stopped at Walmart on the way back to get pop, chips, sunblock and aloe. We had made the mistake today of not putting on sunscreen this morning and three of us got a little burned. Emma is just tanning.

As for our shopping, Anna bought a keychain that says “Quebec” and a ring with blue and white stones. She didn’t realize that blue and white are the colors of Quebec, but it seems appropriate. Emma wanted to buy a five-foot high grizzly bear dressed as a Canadian Mountie, but she was satisfied buying a much smaller raccoon instead. Dad got the aforementioned book about the Quebec mural and a CD of Quebecois folk songs that he found at Walmart. Ironically, Julie didn’t buy anything today, in spite of the fact that it is her birthday. She said she really didn’t see anything that she wanted, but we all think that she had all her fun exploring with us today.


Postscript: After resting up and cooling off, we decided to go out once more. We left the hotel room at 8:00 and went back to downtown Quebec City. The girl at the information booth yesterday had tipped us off to a free Cirque du Soleil show that is held each night at 9:30. The place where it is held is a pretty amazing example of creative use of urban space. The show is under to highway overpasses, in a space that would be wasted anywhere else. The show itself was a pretty amazing display of acrobatics, and was mixed with surreal images made of lights, sounds, projected images, costumes and puppetry. None of the equipment that was used seemed “traditional.” The “trapeze” ropes, for example, were made of bungee cords, allowing the acrobats to slingshot each other up into the air. The story (if there was one) was a little hard to follow, but that didn’t really detract from enjoying the show. Our only complaint was that there seemed to be very little direction about where to go or sit or stand, and many people were confused. Ultimately, we had to hold Emma up for most of the show and Anna for part of it. The show lasted for about an hour, and the girls lasted for almost that long. We left just before it ended in order to get back to the hotel for some real rest.