Joie de Vivre in Quebec

I used to be the kind of traveler who felt it necessary to plan out every moment of each trip. I didn’t do this because I needed the safety blanket. I always thought that I would not maximize my time in a certain place without having full, detailed plans, so that I could efficiently conquer all that a place has to offer. A trip to London a few years ago with some friends was the first time I traveled without a firm itinerary. Since then, T and I have made a point of taking trips without too heavily planning our various activities or even destinations. You never know what might happen or who you might meet if you leave things open.

Sunday morning the rain was coming down heavily in Quebec. With the forecast calling for rain most of the day it looked like we would not be able to explore much of the city. Around noon, fortune smiled on us and the rain stopped. It was also approaching lunchtime so we grabbed an umbrella and headed out to walk the streets. Our plan was to walk up to the Citadel and take some pictures, find a place to eat and maybe pick up a few souvenirs.

We took some shots from the Citadel, which was the highest point in the city, including the picture of the Frontenac posted here. After an excellent lunch topped off by dessert crepes, we walked around Vieux Quebec looking for souvenirs and a book store. The book store was across the street from a pub, the Pub Saint-Alexandre, that we had been told served over 200 different types of beers. The previous night when we walked by this place people gathered there were overflowing out into the street, so we decided to stop in and check it out.

Not long after we sat down T remembered another souvenir she wanted to get. I was pretty content on my stool, so she headed out and left me at the pub. No sooner had she left than a man sat a few seats down from me and I noticed that he spoke English. We started talking, he was a former biker (wife made him give it up) so we swapped riding stories for a little while. He was from Toronto and in Quebec for a conference. Looking for affirmation of our decision to come to Quebec, I asked him about the city. We had the option of building Quebec or Montreal into our route, so I asked him his opinion. He emphatically said that we made the right choice to come to Quebec. We continued to talk about various things until a couple of guys came in and sat on the stools in between us.

When these guys first sat down I was a little disappointed to not be able to continue talking to my new friend. Shortly after they sat down, I overheard them speaking to each other in English, but placing their order with the bar maid in her native Quebecois French. I was curious enough to ask them about it. They were both from just outside of Ottawa, but one of them was second generation Canadian with his family hailing from France, so he was fluent in the language. I continued to speak with Jon and Luke for awhile. They asked about me; where I was from, how I came to be in Quebec, etc. I proudly told them about our motorcycle trip up from North Carolina, which had garnered respectful responses when I had told others about it. Luke said that they were doing something “similar, only without the motor”. Jon and Luke had set out from Vancouver in mid-May on their bicycles for a trip across Canada.

I enjoyed hearing about their trip, which they estimated had about 10 days left before they would reach their final destination in Nova Scotia. Once there they would have completed their transit of the country save for the island province of Newfoundland, which they intended to conquer with another trip someday. The guys had averaged 100 kilometers a day with some days as high as 200. That’s 60 to 120 miles a day. Some nights they stayed in hotels or with relatives. Other nights, especially in the vast western part of the country, they had camped out under the stars. Once, in British Columbia, they had an equipment problem and were helped by a stranger who drove 70 miles to replace the damaged part.

While I continued talking to Jon and Luke, T returned. Soon she was talking with the gentlemen sitting beside her. The common connection was that he, Michel Lachance, was a retired professional hockey player who had once played minor league hockey for the Greensboro Generals in North Carolina. He was extremely nice and was enthusiastic in sharing about Quebec City, his hometown. He was a well-traveled man, with his hockey career having taken him throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Michel loves to cook and having spent time in France during his hockey career, is a serious foodie. We asked him about his favorite places in the city. He knew chapter and verse about every restaurant in town, but was especially fond of Café du Monde on the waterfront. He made it sound great and soon we were asking him if we should get reservations there for that evening. He did us one better by pulling out his cell phone and calling the restaurant for us. While he was speaking on the phone (in French, of course) the bar maid asked T “Is he making reservations for you? That should be good.”

After Michel completed his call to the restaurant he told us that we had the reservations set for 9PM and that he thought they were going to seat us at one of his favorite tables by the window overlooking the water. Monsieur Lachance also gave us numerous recommendations about what to order. I told him that I had to buy him a drink to thank him. He politely declined saying, “No. I have already decided that I will be buying each of you a drink.” We asked him a couple more times to let us treat him, but ultimately ended up enjoying another beverage on him. Soon we had to leave. We wanted to rest for a bit in the room before heading to Café du Monde for dinner.

The dinner was incredible; we sat at a great window-side table overlooking the water. At Michel’s suggestion we ordered an appetizer of Quatuor de Salmon (smoked, marinated, tartar, and rilletes) and I had the roasted lamb. The food was excellent, but further enhancing the meal was our waitress, Marie Claire. She was just delightful. Teresa kept asking her to teach her say “It is my pleasure” in French. Poor Marie Claire had to repeat it several times before T got the hang of it. Later T asked what her name was. She sweetly told Teresa “you would not be able to pronounce it”, which based on T’s learning of the earlier phrase was probably a reasonable stance. Still...she wrote down her name and tried to help us both to say it correctly, which we either finally did or she was fatigued with giving us the language lesson for the day. Either way her attitude was nothing but pleasant the whole time. By the time we finished it was 11PM and the rain had started to come down again so we took a cab back to the hotel.

We’ve both come to really enjoy sitting at bars in various places, both at home and when traveling. As often as not, with just a little effort you can strike up a conversation with someone and you just never know what might come of it. Today, what seemed destined for a rainy day spent mostly within the hotel ended up providing us with a lot of fun stories and an incredible evening.

Monday we left Quebec for Maine. We were both a little sad to be leaving. Neither of us knew anyone who had visited Quebec before so we didn’t have any trusted opinions upon which to base our expectations for the city. Whatever expectations we did have were exceeded. I truly hope that we’ll find our way back to this place again sometime.

T's Terrific Thought of the Day: No matter what quality your hotel is, the advice of the concierge isn't as good as what you get from a local without another motivation. The bistro our concierge had sent us to for dinner Saturday night was nowhere near as good as Cafe du Monde, while about the same price.