July 16 We drive into Quebec from St. Foy, and are temporarily baffled by a parking garage. You put your credit card in the little slot! You don't try to make the little slot give you a time card. Ohhhh...

Since we are parked just next to the Plains of Abraham and the Cidatelle, we go there first. Quebec is a fortified city--the only one, I think, in the Americas north of Mexico--so not only is it walled, but you must visit the fort there, which is called the Cidatelle. We stop, however, on the way there to grab a snapshot of a particular statue....

This is the statue of mega-patriot, Honoré Mercier (I think I have the name right), whose statue sports not only four patriotic quotes on brass plaques, but also a teeming mass of half-naked peasant swine teeming and threshing wheat around his feet. On our first visit Keith and I were quite taken by the peasant swine, as we call them.

We walk south from Parliament and Mercier's statue through the Port St. Louis...

...and up a hill--no matter where you have to go in Quebec, it seemes that you have to walk uphill to get there--to the plains and the Cidatelle. We skirt the Cidatelle and take some pictures from outside its walls.

Tour guides will tell you that Quebec is a good place to go if you want to look at European-style architecture in the Americas.

Lisa and I are outside the Cidatelle with our backs to the rest of the city, snubbing the Chateau Frontenac.

The flag flies from one of the five points of the star-shaped Cidatelle.

Keith taking that picture.

Keith and I standing around near the Cidatelle, as photographed by Lisa.

A view of Quebec from just outside the Cidatelle.

Before Keith and I had walked through the city when everything was closed; the good thing about this visit is that everything was open, so, among other things, we get to take a tour of the Cidatelle.

There is only one entrance to the Cidatelle: this.

It's the only gate in the city that's been left alone in its original form and size, and this means that the Canadians have a heck of a time fitting some of their larger items through it. For example, the U.S. gave them a Sherman tank as a token of appreciation for their help in World War II. Fine and dandy, except they couldn't drive it through the gate, so they waited for winter, built a huge ramp of snow, and drove the tank in that way. As the tour guide said ironically, "A gift from the Americans."

Inside the fort, we are led on a guided tour, because tourists are not allowed to wander around unsupervised, as it is still a working military base, home to the 22nd Regiment (also called the "Van-Doos," because it's an (actually the only) all-French regiment and Van-Doo is apparently how 22nd sounds to Anglos) and its goat...but more on the goat later.

Here we get a good look at the Cidatelle's chapel, which used to be, when the fort was originally built, the powder magazine.

Keith was interested in the patriotic topiary, but ultimately frustrated with the picture when a groundskeeper got in the way.

Once we are done with the tour, we wander around the Plains of Abraham and gather some picnic lunch items (bread, ham, cheese, apples) from the cooler in the car and sit and eat on the grass. Lisa finds a four-leafed clover, and we worry about being harassed by seagulls. Fortunately they don't notice we're eating until after we've left.

The Plains of Abraham are actually really big, a mile or two long. If you're lucky, you'll run into some municipal employees pretending to be Generals Wolfe and Montcalm, the stars of the battle of 1759 in which Britain won Quebec from the French. We didn't meet any historic actors, but you can't help but wonder, if the two of them run into each other, will they fight?

We continue downhill away from the fort and eventually stop at the Museum of French-America, which is not what it's really called. It's called something in French, but I can't spell it.

Here is the proper spelling of the museum on the face of the building.

Inside, we buy tickets and start to notice that there are some killer student rates available in this town. No kidding. Everything offers at least a dollar off, it seems. I think we have the nearby University of Laval to thank for that. Inside the museum we get a tour of the grounds of what used to be a seminary. The best part of the tour was that the guide referred to the priests who lived there as a group. No one specific priest ever did anything. It was always "The priests this," "The priests that." The effect is comical. One of the things the priests were big into was relics. They collected them fanatically, and so in the chapel on the grounds there are tons of human bones on display. Festive. The vaults, we are told, contain over 6,000 individual relics. The second best thing was that the chapel, which we got to see and which was very opulently decorated, had been secularized, so that no services are held there anymore, but they will rent it out to events, fundraisers, weddings, etc. They were setting up for one (complete with a sound system pumping some modern music) when we left.

This is the building that most of the priests lived in. Like everything else in Quebec, it's burned down multiple times, but parts remain untouched, including, fortunately, a neat little private chapel thing for one of the priests that had amazingly intricate wood carvings for decor.

In the museum part, we see the first floor of the exhibit before closing time. And what is the exhibit? A transported wax museum from the early 1900s that was originally on display in Montreal. And what is it of? Why, the early Christians in the catacombs and in Roman captivity, waiting to be fed to the lions! Cheery, especially with the looped recording of moans and cries and clanking chains. The next day we returned to catch the other two floors of exhibits where the French-Canadian stuff was housed. The permanent display is very nice, complete with a video (with English subtitles, thank goodness) about French-Canadian history and sociology. It's related to us by a typically passionate Frenchman who sang folksongs on occasion and who I can only speculate is the French-Canadian version of Gordon Lightfoot.

Upon leaving the museum, we try to take Lisa for a quick peek into the Notre-Dame Cathedral--better remembered by Keith and me as the church who turned its lights out as soon as we stuck our heads inside. But, it's also home to a light and sound display on (what else?) French-Canadian history and the history of the church, and just now we can't look in and show it to Lisa because the program is about to start.

Here's the cathedral. Note the banners advertizing "Heavenly Lights" ("Fexu Sacré"), the show the church presents.

So, what the heck, a nice guy talks us into getting tickets, and we sit down for fifteen minutes of multi-media inside...a church that thinks it's an Imax theater. Actually, it's a good program, we learn new stuff about the cathedral (such as that it has burned down maybe more times than the seminary), and afterwards Lisa gets to see it in the light.

Now, we're hungry, and Lisa picks an good little restaurant in the Quartier Petit-Champlain for us. We sit outside, and all order the rabbit, which turns out to be really good, considering that we were eating Fiver and Hazel and Bigwig (anyone read Watership Down?).

Finally, too tired to do any more walking, we make for the parking garage and find, to our collective horror, that it's closed. It's past six, and the big garage doors are down and the little pedestrian door is locked. Shock, trauma! The Frenchies have Keith's car locked away in a municipal building! Will we have to ask stupid tourist questions? Will we have to walk twenty miles to St. Foy? No, actually. We cluster around the pedestrian door, and read the French that seems to say "This entrance for customers only." We think this means monthly space renters, not one-day parkers, but there is a credit-card shaped slot. So we try it and...it works! We use the credit card to open the garage doors as we drive out, and we're free! Phew.

July 17 This morning we get up a little earlier and catch the chainging of the guard at ten o' clock at the Cidatelle. Why? Because there's a goat involved. In 1844, every Canadian regiment, we learn, was given a goat by Queen Victoria, and they've kept the tradition.

The goat on the parade ground.

Afterwards, an unidentified man gives Batisse the goat a snack.

Afterwards, we walk down the Promenade of Governors and get breakfast at a shop that sells...beaver tails. Which are not tails of beavers, but in fact pastries.

The Dufferin Terrace, on which the beaver tail shop is located. The tents all house booksellers, which we think is an effort to mimic the booksellers along the Seine.

The view from the terrace. Note how high the banks are.

Another view, looking east down the St. Lawrence.

After re-visiting the French-American museum we return to the hotel and split up, so Lisa can return home in time to rest up for a dance performance and work. Keith and I turn east, cross the St. Lawrence, and drive along the southern bank toward the Atlantic Ocean. However, it would take many, many hours to get to the mouth of the river, and we are just rubbernecking in the countryside. Several overlooks are provided for sight-seeing, although it's hard to get a good view of the river. But, after a stop to get some film for the camera, we find a pull-out next to a stone jetty that leads out into the marshy shore of the river. Just east of Quebec, there are several marshes which are used as stopovers for snow geese.

A town and the marsh.

At the end of the rock jetty, there was a lot of mud. Naturally, we threw rocks into the mud.

We turned around after the jetty stop, and paused at another little park where we'd stopped earlier to have a late lunch. On the return trip, having film, we got some photo documentation...

...including this picture of Keith walking like a goose. Actually, he's looking at the rocks.

And finally, we stop one last time before returning to St. Foy for some farmland and the river.

We have dinner at the McDonald's and, having nothing else to do--until trying to catch the second half of Patrick Stewart's version of Moby Dick dubbed in French for Canadian public TV--we drove west along the north bank of the river. We stop at Cap Rouge to walk around on the public paths and then go on farther, stopping when the sun set. Sadly, there was no sign of Moby Dick that night on the TV.

The sun sets.