Quebec City Part I
We get up this am with Justin and kesh staying with us and Asha and Taylor staying with Dave and Terri. There walking up to the apartment and we’ll all go have croissants in the jean Talon market before we get ready to go. We have quite a project ahead of us: attempting to pack five people and their stuff into our little Saturn. It’s a great car, but really, four people is all that it holds comfortably. We’ve warned everyone that they might be uncomfortable for a few days so no one should be surprised.
The market is bustling on Saturday morning. The two coffee shops we’ve been too before are packed and we make our way into the market to find another coffee shop. Luckily there are more coffee shops than people. We find a few tables, push them together and get some coffee and tea. Terri gets crepes for Justin from a little stand and Dave hunts down loafs of bread. The last row of the market is food stands. They have a beautiful cheese market, a fish stand, a meat stand with grass fed meat and lots of little nibble stands as well.
Back at the apartment, the kids play in the park across the street while vive and I attempt to cram everything into the car. What a project. We’ve got two skateboards for the boys and Rakesh has somehow convinced me (back in June) to pack his tactical vest and sub machine gun. What is a “tactical” vest you might wonder? Well, it’s a military vest that has ten pockets to put all your guns and ammo and knives into (something absolutely necessary on a road trip through North America). Well, they have to go. What was I thinking? What’s he going to do with a 10 lb tactical vest on the road trip? And the machine gun weighs even more. I ask him as we’re packing what he wants with the guns and he says he’s going to shoot birds! Geez. That’s not going to happen. So we leave that stuff with Terri (although Kesh manages to sneak in a gun into the car when he thinks we’re not looking). Somehow it all fits, but just barely and the kids mush themselves into the back and we’re good to go.
Quebec City is about 2.5 hours east of Montreal. And the drive is easy along the Trans Canada highway which is bustling with traffic but not too congested. Our apartment requires some winding through small streets and steep hills. It’s on the edge of the walled city, just north of the main thoroughfare St. Jean (it s a tiny street but it’s very long). We have to climb two very steep hills up to our place, but we love the central location away from the modern parts of the city. Quebec City is an interesting amalgamation of modern suburban city (on the outskirts) to tourism destination (kind of Disney land of 17th century Canada). Like Montreal, it is full of graffiti. I don’t know if they are more tolerant of graffiti than the US or if it’s just too expensive to get rid of.