Labour Day Weekend 2010 continued...

Saturday morning when we awoke, the humidity was gone. The skies were grey. The air was chilly. Big rain clouds hovered overhead. It looked like Hurricane Earl had finally decided to make an appearance and try to interfere with our plans. Let him try.

We were camping at the St. Nicolas KOA which was located about 15 minutes from the Old Town. Instead of driving to the old town for the day (parking and driving there is an absolute bear), we drove to a designated parking lot and hopped on a shuttle bus. It cost $6.00 for the three of us to take the bus there and back for the day. Can't beat that.

This is where we spent our entire Saturday. Old Quebec. It has been years and years since I've been here. Keith never had. Nor had Max. We did a ton of walking all day. And the weather. We experienced everything. It started out grey, cloudy and overcast and chilly. By the afternoon, the sun had broken through and it was downright hot. Soon to be replaced with a light rainshower which lasted a total of 10 minutes. Then back to sunshine again before ending the day with grey rainclouds. We had a total of 10 minutes of light rain the entire day. That was it. It all worked out perfect!

We did alot of stair climbing...

Excavations next to the Chateau Frontenac...

Chateau Frontenac...

I had to brush up on my french reading/speaking skills in a hurry. You can get by speaking English there without too much difficulty. But most everything is written in French only. And once you get out of the big city, we found we needed to use some of our broken (very poor) french to communicate what we wanted. Rather funny and lots of laughs!

This planter was amazing...the entire outside of it was covered in a design of real live plants. I loved it!

We visited many beautiful churches throughout the day...not surprising, most were French Catholic. (Photo below is of Notre-Dame de Quebec Cathedral) but we did find an English Anglican Church (Cathedral of the Holy Trinity) which was really interesting and had alot of history behind it. While we were in that church, there was a young woman singing/practising with a pianist and organist. It sounded sooooooooo beautiful. I could have slipped into a pew and stayed there for an hour listening.  I think that is something that struck me about our short little visit in Quebec - the beautiful music. Everywhere. Performers singing on the street. Musicians practising in the churches. Even in the showers and bathrooms at our campground...beautiful french music played... 

Everywhere you turn, there is old architecture and intricate ironwork to be admired... just lovely.

We went on a guided walking tour of the city. (During this time is when we experienced our 10 minutes of rain.) Our tour guide just bubbled over with historical information. It was good to get a refresher on that grade 8 history all over again.

Max standing in front of a tiny piece of a wall mural...

...This is the rest of it...

Mmmmmm! I've been missing gelato. Well, my waist hasn't. But my tastebuds have been. Such a yummy treat. Always love finding a gelato shop! :-) Decisions....decisions...

Lots of street performers/entertainers/buskers to watch...

Late in the afternoon, we went to check out the Citadelle. We didn't end up taking any tours though. After just being at Fort Henry a couple of days earlier, we decided we had our fill of forts and that type of thing for this trip, so we just walked around a bit and explored the outside grounds before leaving. This was right around the time that my camera just mysteriously died on me and stopped focusing properly. Soooo...the photos are the way they are! 

Around 5:30pm, we hopped back on the bus and went back to St. Nicolas where we were camping. We were all pretty tired out from our day of non-stop walking. The temps were def cooler and the sky looked like it was trying to rain. But it didn't. We enjoyed a tasty dinner and a toasty roaring campfire all evening long. Early to bed. We were tired...all three of us!