Quebec, la belle provence and the city

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

            We walked around the cobblestone lanes and the little shops – the Quebecois think nothing of placing a kids’ toy shop next to an adult sex shop – aware that it’s all so touristy around these parts but it’s still all so lovely.

         

   I’ve been to Quebec City a couple of times before and each time, I am reminded of the previous visits’ pleasant memories. This time, I was struck by the way the moonlight sparkled in the water of the Saint Lawrence at night. We rarely see it in the Arctic. The sun is always up or the ocean is always frozen.

We ended the evening with some beer from the gas station, one of my favourite things about Quebec, good old gas beer.

       

 Quebec City's breathtaking evening skyline

road trip, first stop: Quebec City

our first stop on our road trip across Eastern Canada was Quebec City. I suppose our reasoning was that we wanted to get as far away from the chaos of Toronto's G20 as we could, so why not go to the last place the G20 summit was held in Canada? Quebec City was every bit as lovely as the last time i'd seen it. we only had one night to enjoy the city though, so we had to do an express touring of Quebec, distilled to its best things - mainly, walking around the old city and eating yummy carnivorous French food.


Quebec City is really old

people always talk about how Quebec City is great because it's so old and European. I myself never really understood why any European tourist would come to Quebec City to experience Canada. It kind of strikes me as being similar to Chinese people coming to Toronto and hanging out in Chinatown. Yes, there are similarities but I'm sure every European visitor can't shake off the feeling that something is a little off, a little weirder than home. maybe it's the lack of North African vendors selling delicious ethnic food on the streets; maybe it's the way the streets are clean, too clean, except for the VIVE LE QUEBEC LIBRE graffiti scrawled on random stone walls. despite all this though, Quebec City certainly is Canada's most European city and certainly is a lot cheaper to visit if you don't have the money to hop a plane to France.

our favourite part, however, was the food, of course. especially since rob is a French-trained cook.


Quebec: Good at food...okay at wine.

we ate dinner at Aux Anciens Canadiens, a restaurant at the heart of Vieux-Quebec and obviously popular with tourists, given their tourist-rate prices. despite their staggering prices, i appreciated this restaurant because of the menu choices, a veritable Canadian Noah's Ark of wild game. between rob and i, for example, we ate pretty much every animal that could be found in the Quebec wilderness.


PETA's nightmare - on this table you will find: elk, bison, deer, buffalo, caribou, pork knuckles, and some other things that I didn't translate properly from the waitress.

between all that and the bottle of wine (no, we didn't spring for the $5000 bottle), we went to bed early, too stuffed full of meat while anticipating a long drive the next day. we did make sure we stopped by a creperie for breakfast the next morning, however.


Rob and his French toast...or, just toast, as they call it here.

today was spend following the rain make its way across the whole country, as we took on the rest of Quebec, and across the entire New Brunswick to get to Prince Edward Island. Canada is really really big. it was a long drive, getting through New Brunswick, especially when you foolishly decide to take the back roads where the truckers used to go to avoid getting weighed. we passed the time by naming all the animals we saw narrowly escape death under car - shrews, coyotes, crows, chipmunks, porcupines (actually, the three porcupines we saw were already dead). it was a long drive, like i said, and a lot of nature. i was particularly struck by the bright yellow of the canola fields in New Brunswick, which became quite the contrast with the bright red dirt of Prince Edward Island. it was all definitely things that I have not seen before.

eventually we made our way over the glorious Confederation Bridge, the longest bridge in Canada, and into Prince Edward Island, where we only got a little lost. unfortunately, by the time we got to the cottage, it was dark (after eleven hours of driving!) so i haven't had much of a chance to see the Island...but that will all wait for me tomorrow!


obligatory cute couple shot

oui, ta mere

quebec city was amazing, and a perfect end to my summer. celebrating its 400th anniversary this year, the city was kind of a Eurotrip Version 2.0 for me, and indeed my dad and i noted that it really was like being back in Europe, what with the cobblestone streets, narrow lanes, really good expensive dining....and horse poop everywhere.

but in Canada! nothing around here is very old (except Aboriginal culture, of course). i mean, one of Toronto's biggest attractions is the medieval wannabe castle Casa Loma which is ALMOST A HUNDRED YEARS OLD. WOW. but Champlain founded Quebec City in 1608, which is nothing to laugh at. Quebeckers claim it is the oldest city in North America, which is true as long as you don't count the Natives (and as the Air Farce clip goes, "nobody counts the Hindians...or St. Johns.")

at any rate, it was pretty exciting for various reasons:

1. my sister and i got to practice our french, which as it turns out, is still pretty poor.

2. horse poop! on cobblestone roads! how quaint!

3. Montmorency Falls, which the French never fail to remind us, is 30 metres higher than Niagara Falls (ie: les Anglophones suck)

4. the Plains of Abraham, where the British scaled the massive bluffs and fought the French, who put up a good fight for TWENTY MINUTES before celebrating.

5. if anything went wrong, we could blame the French. (see reason #4)

6. i kid. i love the french. i would gladly spit in Toronto's face to live in Quebec if only i could bear the cold winters. i especially love French food. so rich. so expensive. thankfully it was being paid out of daddy's wallet.

7. remnants Quebec City Summit of the Americas protests in 2001. i was in high school at the time, and all my friends were going to Quebec City to protest the FTAA, geared up with megaphones, scarfs, banners, and water bottles. i was all set to go - but my parents put their foot down. i went to class; my friends got arrested and made headline news. alas, i lost my chance to see the beautiful city until now, with my parents, with Dubya safely out of reach. but you could still see parts of it leftover, even though the city had worked hard to beautify everything. we saw graffiti along the concrete median that said BUSH CLAN #1 TERRIRISTES. clearly proclaimed by a French anarchist trying to express his anti-capitalist rage in english. or something.

8. most importantly, i got to spend some much needed time with FAMILY. which is always good. even if it means having my sister stealing the blankets all night. or having my father wake us up way too early in the morning "WAKE UP ALL OF YOU IT'S ALREADY SEVEN THIRTY AND WE HAVE SO MUCH TO DO." i didn't realize that i was travelling with luke again.

and now, i am back in toronto again, looking forward to tomorrow, which brings....the first day of school. sob.

mommy, what does "awkward" mean?

i'm in quebec city. with my (conservative) parents. during gay pride weekend.

this is going to be good.