Congrats to all you travel bugs who correctly guessed that the last stop on our vacation was to Old Quebec City! Kelly and Valerie should stay tuned for a prize of some sort or another!
It was seriously one of the absolute coolest places we'd ever been as a family and every single person in our family was completely enamored with our little taste of the Old World in the middle of Canada. From the English and French architecture, to the plethora of French food (that wasn't very expensive), to the streets bustling with people morning, noon, and night, we were sad that we'd only left about 24-hours to explore there.
One of the most fascinating parts of Old QC was the fact that it never seemed to slow down a bit. We first arrived there around 10:00pm one night and couldn't believe the sheer number of people milling around so late at night. It made us wonder what it was like when something actually exciting was happening.
As it was, the people took over the streets and had to make way for any cars that were bold enough to try to make their way through the crowds.
One of my favorite sights was standing at the edge of a bluff at night overlooking Lower Quebec City. The St. Lawrence River is in the background and the city of Levis is across the river. Wow!
Sitting atop that bluff, Le Chateau Frontenac dominates the Quebec City skyline and is considered the most photographed hotel in the entire world.
And since it was in approximately 25% of the 602 photos that I took in QC, it's definitely not a stat that I'll argue with!
In fact, we even got a family picture with it in the background while we were on the ferry from Levis to QC. Don't mind how completely tired and unattractive I look in this picture. It had been a LONG day driving!
This building and fountain caught my fancy while we were there and I also have a gazillion pictures of this in the day and night.
I mentioned all the street performers in the last post, but in the ultimate of all ultimates of street performances....Cirque du Soleil does a free show there five nights a week. The lines were a mile long and we could only watch it through the fence, but what we did see was fascinating and fun!
And although we didn't plan it this way, the last night we were there just happen to be one of Quebec City's twice weekly firework shows during August.
From our vantage point up on the bluff overlooking the St. Lawrence, it was every bit as breathtaking as you might imagine and was a great send off as we left the next morning.
Stay tuned for one more QC post, which at long last will officially be the last (or second-to-last) vacation post of 2013!
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, then you won't be surprised to find that scenes like this one I snapped from the moving car are abundant in PEI. It just wasn't hard to imagine Gil and Anne coming over the ridge on their way down to the Lake of Shining Waters. (I'll do a whole post on the all of the Anne sites and activities later)
