14th September – Quebec City, QC

This morning we headed out to do the “Fortifications of Quebec” walk, which is a national historic site. The walk basically follows the old walls around the perimeter of the town and is approximately 4.6 km’s and allows great views both within the walls and outside the walls of Quebec City (oh and even more cannons – how many cannons can one town possibly have??). The walk took us a while as we stopped off reading many of the historical boards about the town itself and its history.
We stopped for coffee. They do everything big here in Canada, big pumpkins, big lobsters, big fish and big bowls of coffee!!

We went down into the Rue de Petit Champlain – one of the narrowest streets in North America. Whilst charming, it was teeming with tourists. Ah, so this was where they were all hiding! We did a loop through the Vieux Port (Old Port) which had some beautiful fall colours in the trees. We will probably miss the best of the colours by a few weeks here, but they are still magnificent. I'm not sure sure this pics do them justice.

Back up towards the Rue de Petit Champlain we came across a dodgy souvenir shop that sold animal skins and heads (yuck). Can you see the resemblance in this photo with the bear??I’m hoping that this is the closest we will ever have to come to one in Canada! Down in the Lower Town we stopped at the Place Royale, the central principle square. Dan had to go to this aply named shop and have a look around.
We walked outside of the walls downtown and found this beautiful building that the Canadian HR Dept works in(how come I’ve never worked in anything resembling a castle) and this, would you believe the train station, and the water feature out the front. But that is Quebec for you. There isn’t a much unattractive about this charming city.

Now that we know that we are going to Points North in less than a fortnight we checked the temperature. Daily temp is sitting on around 5 and it is heading to the minus territory in the evening. By the end of October (when the visa situation will dictate we have to leave Canada) we can expect the evening temps to drop down to below 20 degrees. With that in mind we went to the most awesome shop, Mountain Equipment Cooperative. Think Mountain Designs on a massive scale. This is the female version of the male jacket that Dan needs (didn’t have his size and he doesn’t want yellow for some strange reason!). $350 CDN thanks very much – expensive rain coat. I bought some matching down filled pants to match my down filled jacket and now appear about 40 kilo’s heavier when kitted up (I don’t think I will be caring a great deal) and Dan stocked up on more cold weather gear too as he’ll be braving the elements a lot more than I will. I will never complain about Perth winter again – me thinks!! Anyhow, after this stint we are definitely going somewhere warm – I keen for Cuba or Mexico or anywhere that is warm by that stage.

We headed home from MEC and onto a pub. Dan was most impressed – it had over 100 international beers. In fact I think he may have been in heaven…