Travel Blog: Quebec City and the Countryside

Our revised itinerary also provided us with an overnight in Quebec City. Our originally scheduled tour did go out yesterday, Sunday, and it was a good thing, as on Monday morning it is currently windy, raining and about 12 degrees. It is supposed to improve in the middle of the day so we can go for a walk around the old town and maybe find someplace to have lunch. We're scheduled to leave for Saguenay at 11:00 tonight.

Yesterday's weather was quite nice for our all-day tour in and around Quebec City. We had a really entertaining tour guide, Gilles, who, once he found out we were from Toronto, kept making jokes about the Leafs: Did you know that Toronto is the only place in the country where the 'leafs' fall in the spring?? Otherwise, he was very good.

We started the tour in the old city and then drove up through Battlefields Park (Plains of Abraham) and the Chateau Frontenac Hotel for some time on our own.

The famous Quebec Mural was painted
in the 1990s and depicts the city's history

The Plains of Abraham

This is a statue of Joan of Arc donated
by 'anonymous x 2' who were so
enchanted by Quebec City that they gave it
for this park on the edge of the Plains.

Nothing around here comes without a story -
this statue of Champlain isn't really him. No likeness
could be found, so the sculptor ended up using, without realizing,
the face of Botticelli, who worked for the French government as a
(not completely honest) keeper of the treasury. Gilles says: They have
a statue of an Italian crook paying homage to the founder of the city.

Then we started heading out of the city toward the east. Our first stop was Montmorency Falls. The falls are 270 feet high, half again as high as Niagara Falls, and mark the end of the Montmorency River. If one has time and energy, there's a trail that goes almost to the falls that includes staircases totaling over 400 steps from the bottom to the top of the cliff. For those not wanting to do that, there's also an enclosed gondola. And for real thrill seekers, you can either walk across a bridge over the falls or Zipline across.

After Montmorency Falls, we stopped at the Albert Gilles copper art studios. This is, apparently, the last art studio of its kind in North America, where they specialize in embossed copper pieces all made by hand. Albert, originally from France, made custom pieces for the rich and famous in the US until he moved to Quebec. Then he did a lot of work for the church, especially the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre. His daughters and grand-daughter run the business now and do the designing. The work is absolutely amazing, given how much work is involved in the embossing process.

He also produced what he called the 'Christorama', 50 separate pieces depicting the life of Christ. They are all on display at the studio and are just amazing works.

Some of the beautiful work they do. The
cloisonne painting is still done
by the widow of Albert Gilles

Our next stop was for lunch at the Auberge Baker, a popular and well-known restaurant. Our lunch was a buffet, but it included a lot of local specialties: pea soup, tourtiere, meatballs, home-cured salami and pastrami, and even maple-sugar pie. It was a delicious meal, and we were ready to tackle the next stop - Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre.

The Auberge

Pea soup, tourtiere, home-cured meats,
devilled egg and some roast beef

The Basilica is huge and very impressive on the inside as well as the outside. Its origins are the same as many others around the world. Seafarers from France found themselves in very stormy waters and prayed to Sainte-Anne for help, promising to erect a shrine to her wherever they might land. This was their landing point, on which three churches were eventually built, each larger than the previous one. People were said to have been cured of illnesses and disabilities here, so it became, and still is, a worldwide point of pilgrimage. It has become such an important place of worship that 2 popes, John Paul II and Francis, have celebrated masses here.

There are 3 sets of doors like this, all hand
made by Albert Gilles.

Donated crutches no longer needed
by pilgrims who were cured

The central piece is about 7 feet high
and was also made by Albert Gilles

Not only did we see the main church, but we also went downstairs to the Immaculate Conception chapel, where there is also one of only 2 copies of Michelangelo's Pieta on display.

There are other chapels outside the Basilica. We didn't visit them as we were short of time.

Our final stop on the countryside tour was on the Ile d'Orleans, the island of Orleans. There's lots of agriculture on this large island, but it is most well-known for the sugar maples and the maple sugar and maple syrup they produce. We were given a short presentation on the process from harvesting the sap from the trees to the various products that are made, all just by boiling the sap to various temperature points and then cooling it in certain ways. Everyone was given a tasting of maple syrup, maple butter and we made our own maple taffy sticks. Thick maple syrup was poured over crushed ice (in winter they use snow) and then we rolled it around a popsicle stick. Of course it was too warm for it to harden, but it tasted amazing nonetheless.

In the evening we had made a dinner reservation at The Colonnade, which is the buffet restaurant onboard. On a few occasions per cruise, they do a Thomas Keller Family-Style dinner and we were encourage to try it out as it is a really different concept.

There's no buffet for this dinner, but a set menu that is served family-style for the number of people at the table. The menu was Salad with Green Goddess Dressing, Slow-Cooked Pork Baby Back Ribs, Manchego cheese and finally, a Potted Cheesecake for dessert. Here are the photos:

It was a really great and unique dinner service, and quite delicious. We're booked for the Fried Chicken Dinner later in the cruise.

Finally, last night's entertainment was a dance party. It was supposed to be outside, but the possibility of rain, which did show up, moved it into The Club, the venue for live music in the evenings. It certainly was hopping, and all of the entertainment staff came out to sing along with the band and mingle with the guests.

We had met one of the singers, Tiffany, on the first evening and had a nice chat with her. The first production show they did was on Saturday night - an Evening with Sir Tim Rice - and we found it fantastic. She, and all the other singers, have great voices and did a spectacular job.