Tales from my family's cross-country road trip
The night before my family was supposed to leave on our epic road trip, I
had food poisoning.
It was already bad enough that I was dealing with the unholy trifecta of allergies, asthma, and a cold (possibly pneumonia), but now I was spending the night in the bathroom in the throes of an upset stomach, miserably trying to decide whether I wanted to wake up my mother or my husband. The truth is, nobody wants to be alone while they were sick, but deep down you know, as an adult, there isn’t really much that can be accomplished by complaining to your husband or your mother. Still, I irrationally wanted someone to be miserable with me. I figured it should be my husband – I suppose that’s what the whole wedding ceremony is about, my parents handing me over to my husband and warning him, “She’s your problem now," – but even when you approach the age of thirty, you never really lose the urge to whine to your mother when you were sick. But I suppressed that urge. So I spent night alone, unhappy, and altogether way too awake.
By morning I was cranky and still little nauseous, but my whole family
piled into the car anyway and hit the road.
We soon arrived in Quebec, where despite all the vast empty spaces the
cars still cut us off closely in the most casual way, where the store clerks
patiently wait for us to awkwardly mangle their beautiful language while they take pity and respond in English.
My parents, who had never been east of Quebec City in their entire lives,
soon discovered that they loved the Quebec countryside.
Quebec City:
My dad has a knack for finding the most random spots in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know what method he uses to find the motels and restaurants we end up at. Despite these out-of-the-way locations, the quality tends to be pretty good.
We checked into a Comfort Inn at Ste-Foie, a place I only know the
significance of through the Jean Leloup song:
“pour un fille d’Ottawa, grandit a Ste-Foie
avec un pere militair
et un belle-fille que fut sa mere.”
For dinner, my dad found a little
restaurant called La Cuisine du Marche in a converted house next to a plaza
with a law office in a strip mall across the street. Sometimes these little
unremarkable places surprise you. This place's menu offered wagyu beef cheeks,
beef tartare, and a pleasant selection of Quebec microbrewery beers. I ordered
a duck confit and foie gras poutine – the ultimate Quebec themed meal. I was
pleasantly surprised by my dinner, which we ate at 5:30PM, which is what
happens sometimes when you travel with your parents.
After dinner, we wandered into
Quebec City proper, wandering around the Plains of Abraham and the Citadel to
try to find a bathroom.
The Citadel
the Plains of Abraham
Quebec City's breathtaking evening skyline
