Montreal

(ye olde 1)

(!)

(ye olde 2)

(marmot!)

(graffiti)

(advertising!)

(squirrel)

(white squirrel!)

(Rue St-Denis)

(Val and Louise-Phillipe picnic atop Mont-Royal)

Montreal is a cool city. In the funky – cosmopolitan – young people – good graffiti – arty – lots going on – kind of way.

Tadoussac

We were a couple of weeks too early. There was a lot of snow but no whales… but Tadoussac was still a cool place to visit though. It’s where a big fjord that I can’t pronounce or spell correctly meets the St Laurence so there is a mixture of salt and fresh water, hot and cold, therefore a lot of marine life. Every little cafe / restaurant / souviner shop had pictures of whales and belugas and whatnot on the outside, but that was unfortunately as close as we got to them. (It was the very end of April; if you go there, go at the start of May). We tried to do a bit of walking instead but were lacking those tennis shoes Canadians strap to their feet so it ended in tears pretty quickly…

Driving Quebec City -> Tadoussac

I continue my painfully slow slide-show of Quebec adventures with the day and a half we took to get from Quebec city to Tadoussac. We left late one afternoon, drove until nightfall, then slept here:

It was somewhere not far from Baie-St-Paul I think. We ate a picnic dinner in the car and felt a bit sketchy, especially when all the passing cars went past us so slowly. Realised a bit later on that it was because a deer was hanging out on the road just past our car! Next day took it slowly and had plenty of stops to check out the beautiful scenery:

Like this frozen lake! Wow, so Canadian. If only there was a moose, a bear and a beaver playing ice-hockey on it and it would be quintessential aye?

Quebec City

Quebec City is very cool. It turns 400 this year and feels like a real European city. You know, narrow cobbled streets, beautiful cathedrals, sense of history, everyone speaking French, that kind of thing. I imagine this is pretty rare in North America.

Canoeing with beavers!

That’s right, canoeing with beavers! You know what that means, I must be in Canada. Quebec in fact, but it’s too early yet for politics. I’ve been here for the last two weeks and have lots of fun to share so will post a few times in the coming days/weeks. Back to the canoeing…

On my first morning in Quebec Mr. Valois was nice enough to take us out on a canoe tour. There weren’t any beavers. Apparently they all died a few years ago when there was an especially severe winter and the rivers froze completely, leaving them either stuck in their dams or stuck out of them. Never mind, they’ll be back, and there were a lot of muskrats to keep me entertained:

Sitting on the front log. Click on the picture to make it bigger.

Sorel, the town Val comes from, is where another big river joins the St Laurence. Two weeks before I arrived there was 10 foot of snow, then there was two weeks of 20+ temperatures. This meant that the usual spring floods were bigger than usual, making for good canoeing and bad luck for this guy:

That photo was taken from the road, and all the houses were flooded the same. They’re all on high stilts too because this happens every year, but I guess they hadn’t realised how bad it could get.

Canoeing was a great way to see the country, it was so peaceful paddling round and a very nice introduction to the province. Look, innit beautiful: