A Whale Of a Time

So we have reached the end of my Quebec vacation recap.  You can see the other posts here, here and here.

On the last day of our vacation, we made the three hour drive to Tadoussac to go whale watching.  It was a long drive through the mountains.  The hills were intense.  I was pretty worried because for the first time in our vacation, it was pouring rain and foggy.  We took the scenic route along the St. Lawrence, and couldn't even see it, it was so foggy.  Three hours (six total if counting the drive back) is a long way to go if you can't see any whales.


The harbor looked beautiful in the fog

Lucky for us, we saw some whales, and lots of them. 


A minke whale

We saw a few minke and humpback whales.  I was really hoping for some breaching, but the best we could get was a few tails.


The tail of a humpback

It was so foggy that we could hear the blow holes of whales that were nearby, but we couldn't see them.


A Seal

 There were tons of seals.  At one point I think about 50 of them swam past the boat.
 

A Blue Whale

 We were very fortunate that we saw a few blue whales.  This one was feeding, so it kept coming up.  It's hard to even describe how big it was.  It's a pretty amazing feeling to be looking at the largest animal ever to have existed.  (I looked it up, that's a fact!)


A Humpback

So the drive to Tadoussac was definitely worth it.  I kept my eye out for moose on the way home since all of the signs said that we should be watching out for them, but there were apparently none to be seen. 

It was a great trip and I feel so lucky that we have so much culture and beauty in this country of ours!

Waterfalls of Quebec

Ryan and I are big into waterfalls, so of course, we had to make a few stops while in Quebec. 

The first waterfalls, Montmorency Falls, is just outside the city and is basically on the side of the highway.  It's taller than Niagara, although not as wide.  We did the entire trail and walked the stairs to the bottom.  Then we realized we had to walk the 470 stairs back to the top.  Either that or take the Gondola for $20.  $20?  I don't think so.

It was very beautiful although very touristy.

After Montmorency falls, we drove around Ile D'Orleans, which is a large island in the middle of the St. Lawrence.  We stopped at a Chocolaterie which had ice cream.  I had a dark chocolate dipped cone, and let me tell ya, I am still dreaming about this delicious ice cream cone.  It's a good thing it's so far away....

We also stopped at a Chocolaterie which had ice cream.  I had a dark chocolate dipped cone, and let me tell ya, I am still dreaming about this delicious ice cream cone.  It's a good thing it's so far away....

It was impossible not to get chocolate on your face...just sayin'

We stayed for a couple of nights at Mont-Saint-Anne, and hiked Les Sept-Chutes the next day, which means Seven Waterfalls (for those of you who speak the same amount of French as my husband). It was an amazing hike up to the top. 

They also have a hydroelectric plant there.  At the top we were able to see the dam. 

From the dam down to the plant, they had this huge pipe that is full of water flowing through it.  The hydro plant controls the water pressure based on the hydro demand at any given time.

We also did a tour of the hydro plant.  It was built in the early 1900s and it took 300 men 3 years to build the entire system.  They then had men living on site to run the plant.  It is now run remotely and everything is automatic.  It was really interesting.

I love being somewhat active on our holidays, and so all of the walking and hiking on this trip definitely met that criteria!  It was pretty exhausting but everything we did was worth it.

Guess what, I'm not done talking about this trip yet.  Next week I will tell you about the "biggest" activity that we did.  (Then I'm done, I promise, maybe.)

The Quebec Experience

Besides doing a lot of walking in Quebec, we did make some time for a few activities as well.  There are a few museums in the city, but we aren't really museum people.  I wanted to do a few educational activities without boring Ryan too much!

One of the big things to do in Quebec is to visit The Citadelle.  The Citadelle is basically an old fort that is shaped somewhat like a star in order to increase the protection of the city.  It was built in the early 1800's but was never really used as Quebec was never attacked after the War of 1812.


We arrived in time for the changing of the guard at 10am.  Although this was a long and somewhat boring event, it was still somewhat interesting to see.  I figure that so much time was spent on it because they had all of these soldiers and they were never attacked, so they had a lot of time on their hands.


They don't use these anymore...

The Citadelle is still an active military base, so we had to do a tour and couldn't wander by ourselves.  That was probably for the best anyways as we learnt much more about the history on a tour.

We also did a tour of The Morrin.  The Morrin was the city's first jail, which was then a college and is now a library.  I found this tour to be very interesting and well worth the money that it cost us!

From inside the jail cell

We started in the old jail, which for whatever reason they never renovated.  It was really neat and they told us some old stories of the jail and some examples of punishments.  Ryan was put in solitary confinement.  I was just held in the jail for awhile before they shipped me off to Australia.  Australia is much better than solitary in my opinion!

The library at The Morrin

The one night that we were there, we went on a Ghost Tour of the city.  This tour was more stories of murder and mystery that had taken place in the city, but they were still very interesting and gave us something to do.  The last stop was an old church that had a ghost story.  The guide took us in and we sat in the dark while she told the story.  That was slightly scary.

We also saw a free Cirque du Soleil show.  Free!  I was expecting it to be super boring because of this, but it was amazing!  They had so many acrobats doing different things.  I honestly thought that somebody was going to fall at any second.  I didn't even stop watching to pull my camera out.

 Other than those things, we did a Parliament Tour and a lot of wandering and exploring.  It really felt like it was walk, eat, walk, eat, sleep, repeat.  It really is nice to offset those nice relaxing beach vacations with something that is a bit more active and makes you think more.

Bonjour Quebec!

Quebec City is about a 9 hour drive from where we live.  We drove it in one day.  Which was crazy.  It's doable of course, but let me tell you the last 2 hours were painful, and I wasn't even the one driving. 

Old Quebec is beautiful.  It honestly feels like you are walking through France.  This vacation was a bit weird for us because the last city vacation that we did was to New York, where you can go go go for four days and still not fit everything in.  Quebec isn't like that.  We had 2 days and 3 nights and we had tons of time to spare.  A lot of it is just walking around, shopping a little bit and exploring.

Place Royale

By the end of the first day, my feet hurt, badly.  It's a lot of walking and a lot of hills.  On the bright side, considering how much we ate, all of that walking was probably a good thing. 

One of the highlights for Ryan of course was the poutine.  For those who don't know, poutine is a Quebecois invention which involves French fries covered in cheese curds and gravy.  It is extremely delicious and back in my younger years (meaning grade 9 and 10) I ate it frequently.  I have to be a bit more careful with it these days.

The highlight for me was the crepes.  One day for lunch we went to a crepe restaurant.  When I eat crepes, I just go all out.  Why waste time on a meal crepe when I can just go straight to dessert?  So nutella and bananas for me!  Ryan actually got a pizza crepe that had cheese, pizza sauce and pepperoni and it looked really great. 

Walking the walls

Chateau Frontenac

Despite all of the walking, it's a somewhat relaxed vacation.  There isn't a million things to do in Quebec, so you can just take your time.  They do have horse carriage rides for fairly reasonable prices if you need a break from walking, but we didn't end up doing that. 

Next, I will talk about a few of the actual activities that we did in Quebec, so stay tuned!