We left Prince Edward Island and embarked on a LONG drive to Quebec City. We had one break in the middle when we stopped at a town called Grand Falls to see their cool waterfall. 

When we made it to Quebec City, we got poutine for dinner. I’d never had it before and I thought it was really good. Very filling. Holly and I both got the smallest size and couldn’t finish it. 

We stayed at a hostel and set out the next day to explore the city. The city is really cool because it has all these old buildings that are in the style of new France. I was surprised to see/hear so much french in Quebec. I knew french was spoken here but I didnt know it was the primary language. 

Pretty early on in our walk I saw a cat in a window, which was great. 

We walked around the harbor and then a part of the city with lots of shops. We walked through some art galleries and saw some art that was very good and some that was pretty weird. 

There was an event going on where there were art installations throughout the city. The one I found most impressive was a huge inflated microorganism that was hung along the fire escape of a building. The description said what organism it was but I can’t remember the name. 

We also went to the museum of bad art, which has some pretty funny pieces. The description plaques say where the pieces are from and often they’d say the art was from a thrift shop or “rescued from the trash.”

This one of mother mary and Jesus was my favorite. 

We took a break for lunch and got crepes which were quite photogenic and yummy.

We kept walking and saw the Château Frontenac, which is a very grand hotel. 

Then we saw the Citadelle of Quebec, which is a big fort, but it doesn’t look that cool when you’re walking around it because it’s just some walls. 

Then we walked to the city’s parliament building which had very nice landscaping and some gardens out front with produce that you’re allowed to pick (but it seems like not many people do). 

Next we walked through the Plains of Abraham, which is a big park that was the site of an old battle. We happened to come on a day when they were having an event where reenactors had set up camp in the park and were marching around and firing guns. It was fun to watch, and I made the comment to Holly that these guys must be so happy because this is like their Comic Con. 

This guy had brought out his collection of old cooking equipment and was showing people how he would cook things. Too bad it was all in French and I had no idea what he was saying.

Our final stop for the day was the city’s art museum. It’s not very big but it had a big section with Inuit art that I really liked. 

We got Italian food for dinner and walked back to the hostel. LOTS of walking for today. The next day, we drove to Quebec City’s aquarium. It was GREAT. They had a lot of cool stuff. They had a big tank with leopard sharks. They had a cool jellyfish exhibit. They had cute seals that we saw swimming around. They had walruses, which are HUGE, and I don’t think I’ve seen them in captivity before. They even had two polar bears which we got to see swimming around and wrestling with each other. We ended our time at the aquarium by petting some stingrays, which were nice and flappy. 

After the aquarium we drove to Montreal. It’s only a three-hour drive, which felt very easy compared to the other drives. In Montreal, we dropped our stuff off at our hostel and then went out to explore Old Montreal. It was similar to Quebec City in that the buildings all had an old style, though the style was a bit more gothic than Quebec city. As we walked around we’d point at stuff and say “that looks old!” 

We saw the Notre Dam Cathedral but didn’t think it was worth it to try to go inside because we’d seen enough grand churches in Italy. 

We got bubble tea and then walked around some touristy shops. Then we walked down to the waterfront, which was super interesting because it had all these old abandoned buildings from the industrial revolution when this area was the home of a major canal. There were plaques that talked about it and said Montreal and New York City were both vying to be the major trade route into the Northeast, but New York City ultimately won. 

For dinner, we went to Chinatown to give Canada a chance to redeem itself after the weird Chinese food we’d had in PEI. (Sorry I’m about to talk a lot about the food but my Chinese family will want to hear about this.) It was… interesting. The buffet did not have some classic dishes that I expected it to have, like beef with broccoli, and it had some stuff that I would not expect a buffet to have, like beef chow fun. I learned that some of the weird stuff we discovered in PEI do seem to be standard here, like the egg rolls are shaped differently and their idea of fried rice is just brown rice with no vegetables. I was very pleased and surprised to find that they had bai tang gao, which I loved eating while growing up but have never found in Boston. 

While we’ve been in Canada we’ve been looking for a specific kind of beer that Duncan’s dad likes and can’t get in the US. On our walk back to the hostel we saw it in the window of a beer restaurant but it was closed and wouldn’t reopen until 4 pm the next day. It felt like it was mocking us. 

The next day we drove to Montreal’s botanical gardens. They had a ton of different gardens. There were flowers, food bearing plants, aquatic plants, alpine plants, etc. 

Saw some enormous squash that are called snake gourds. 

One of the major attractions of the park is that they have a Chinese garden with pagodas. It had a really nice collection of bonsai. 

They also had a Japanese garden that had ANTOHER collection of bonsai. This garden had a big pond with koi in it, and that was probably my favorite part of the whole place. 

Finally we went inside the greenhouse which had a bunch of tropical and desert plants. 

When we parked at the botanical gardens, they made us pay for 12 hours of parking; there was no smaller amount. We originally thought that was really weird, but later we realized it’s because the gardens are HUGE. We spent four hours there and didn’t see all of it. While we were trying to leave we walked by a couple gardens that we hadn’t looked at and were like “damn.” The botanical gardens are part of a larger park that has a planetarium, an insectarium, and other stuff so it would be very easy to spend a couple days there, but we needed to get back to boston. 

It took 5 hours to drive back to Boston and it was nice to come home to our new apartment (even though it’s still crowded with boxes). I spent the next day unpacking and trying to get stuff done before my job starts. I put up the postcards I’ve collected from my summer of travels (some are from other stuff but most are from this summer) and my collection has expanded so much it doesn’t all fit on the wall I’ve alloted for it. I’ll have to hang some more strings. 

You probably won’t hear from this blog for a while now because my job starts tomorrow! I’m not super excited to give up my nomadic life but a girl’s gotta eat. Hope you’ve enjoyed reading this!