Viva Quebec!

Hi all from a very pretty but rather cold Quebec City - I hope you are all well!

I have been a pretty busy Clare since I last wrote - there was a lot of packing and repacking earlier in the week, and on Wednesday I said goodbye to my workmates. It was a pretty strange feeling really because i was quite sad to be leaving a job that I am pretty much hated - so I guess the sadness must be about leaving behind the great bunch I have worked with. They gave me a great send-off with chocolate cake and some ontario themed gifts, which I loved, and many great memories of Oh Henry gifts and fun pub nights.

After leaving work, I spent Thursday madly running about the city sorting out all my last minute banking and shopping needs, although unfortunately the daunting tax return documents have still not been dealt with - maybe on the train trip back to Toronto on Monday?!?!

I caught the train very early on Friday morning for Montreal, then swapped trains to get to Quebec City in the middle of the afternoon. It was sunny and gorgeous so a great welcome! Quebec City is the only walled city in North America and definitely has a very european feel to it. I have heard very few english speaking folk around me since I arrived and there are not a lot of canadian flags and the like around (everything is the quebecois fleur de lis) so really it is hard to remember that you are in Canada at times! The bone-chilling cold and perpetual images of grown men thumping each other while standing on ice-skates does help remind you though...

Yesterday I took a bit of a wander around to get my bearings and then came back to the hostel to get settled. Unfortunately it is very quiet at the hostel at the moment so other than a couple of crazies in the TV lounge (they were discussing their abilites to make rocks vibrate) there really wasn't anyone much to talk too... nothing else to do but wander down the road for a burger and Quebec-made beer - all very tasty and sent me off to an excellent 11 1/2 hour sleep!!!

Today I have been all over this compact city exploring - I visited the citadel with some great views over the frozen, yet still moving, St Lawrence river and the Chateau Frontenac - one of the most photographed hotels in the world they tell me:

The citadel was (like a lot of things at the moment) not open unless you are a group so I just took a bit of a wander around the bit of the city walls not closed due to ice, and the Plains of Abraham where the British and the French fought a couple of hundred years back. I also visited an Inuit art gallery, full of sculptures of polar bears doing aerobics just like the one my mum, aunties and I saw a couple of years back on the Gold Coast. After that I was in need of some refreshment so snacked on a beaver-tail pastry on the way down the hill to the Lower City.




Things got even more european feeling down here with cobbled streets and cute little lanes full of shops and the like. I wandered around for ages and had a little lunch before heading back up the hill to take advantage of the free internet to write to you guys, and to dry my feet off.


Tomorrow I am hoping to visit the parliament buildiings here and maybe even a museum - it looks as though I may have seen the best of the weather I am going to get here so indoor activities might be a go!

Well I hope you are all great and missing me as much as I miss you!
C