We got an early start and headed into the city to take another city bus tour. Somehow, I forgot my wallet which presented a problem later in the day, but I had grabbed the camera instead of my wallet so it really turned out for the best. We dropped off the other 4 and found a parking garage, which just happened to be connected to the ritzy Le Chateau Frontenac (Fairmont) hotel. Parking for the day was $35.00!!!! But we were just barely in time to make the 9:30 bus so we went ahead and parked. This was another double-decker bus and we got to sit on top again. There are lots of flowers around this city, like all the others, and they had some flower gardens along the boulevard that stair-stepped down this hilly street.
We drove past the Parliament building, which was quite impressive. We came back later to tour it.
We passed this little red and white house, which is the oldest house in Quebec City, but I don't remember what year it was built, sometime in the 1600s. I believe Quebec City is the oldest city in Canada, and is the capital of the province of Quebec. The first part of our bus tour was in Old Quebec, which is the only "fortified" city in North America.
After our 90 minute bus tour, we stopped off for lunch at Pub St. Patrick, which was recommended by our tour guide for its fish and chips. They were good, but not great, and very pricy.
As I said, they do a lot with flowers here, but we spotted this very interesting planter up off a second-story window.
We walked over to the Citadel to see the fort, and Joe wanted to walk on the wall.
The rest of us watched over him to make sure he didn't hurt himself.
There was a fountain along here, the "
Tourny fountain was donated to Quebec City by businessman Peter Simons for its 400th anniversary." We've seen Simons department stores in both Montreal and Quebec City.
We walked on over to the Parliament building and, as I said, this is a hilly city so we had lots of walking uphill. I had a problem here at the Parliament building because I did not have a picture ID with me (since I forgot my wallet), so I had to fill out a piece of paper with my name, address and birth date, then one of the security people "screened me" to decide whether or not to let me in. But they did, and they used Joe's ID to sort of verify my address. One of the most interesting parts of the Parliament building was the stained glass inside.
The blue room is the equivalent to their House of Commons. The pinkish room used to be the Senate but they have done away with that so the room is now used to study bills and for visiting dignitaries.
Rather than walk any further, we hopped back on the bus at the stop and rode the rest of the way around again, then back to the visitor center where we started. Joe and I went over to get the car out of the skinniest, lowest-ceiling parking garage we had ever been in. We found the car, but when we tried to pay with the credit card, the arm wouldn't come up to let us out, even though it had charged us the $35. An attendant finally came over, and he decided to run the card again, so now it was costing us $70. The arm did come up then, but he didn't know what to do about charging us twice, so he sent us over to the hotel receptionist, which of course we didn't know where that was. We drove around to the front of the building, and after a couple of wrong attempts, I found the hotel receptionist and got a $35 credit. Meanwhile, Joe had driven over and picked up the rest of our crew. But we finally got it all straightened out, and headed out of the city to the campground. We apparently were in 4:00 rush hour traffic because it was very slow moving, and the streets here are very narrow. But we creeped on out of town and made it back to the campground. Joe went on a little drive to find a convenience store but didnt' find one, so he dropped off the Brundiges at the campground and the rest of us went on, still looking for that convenience store. We ended up at a very nice IGA grocery store, picked up a few things, Joe fueled the car, and back to the campground to finally call it a day.
We had a little rain during our walk to Parliament, but it didn't last long. Otherwise it was a nice day. Canada as a country is bilingual, but Quebec is the only province that has made French its official language. New Brunswick is bilingual, and the rest are English. So here in the province of Quebec, all government papers are in both English and French, but most businesses just print their stuff in French, like menus, directions, road signs, etc. It's very disconcerting to not be able to understand the road signs, so I won't be sorry to leave Quebec.
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