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C'est Magnifiqué!

Well the day did not get off to the best of starts to be honest. Trevor's arm had got a lot better after a nights rest but Jonathan was now suffering with terrible stomach ache so it did take us a while to get going this morning.

When we did eventually emerge from our hotel we stepped out into a really muggy hot and humid morning but with a strong need for caffeine we headed off in the direction of the nearest Starbucks.

The Starbucks was actually located within the famous Fairmont Hotel that sits overlooking a very impressive promenade with views out across the river so we got to walk through a little bit

of the hotel and believe me it just dripped with opulence and gold leaf!

After breakfast we carried on in the sweltering heat up the promenade which as called the promenade du gouverneurs up towards the citadel fort. After climbing a mountains worth of steps and taking in the views we decided that enough was enough and we needed back to the hotel to get out of our jeans and put much needed shorts and flip flops on...it was that humid.

So for take two of our day out feeling a little cooler we headed off into the maze of streets that make up the old town of Québec City. Now if any of you have been to Fontenbleau in France (not far outside of Paris with may famous chateau's) then Quebec city is a close body double. All the buildings are mainly made of stone and they all have those highly pitched roofs with full penthouses or flats in them with full height windows. The streets are mainly cobbled and nearly every shop front is part of a restaurant or cafe with tables reaching out across the pavements. Awnings coming out of the buildings provide shade form the blistering sun and it feels like the perfect European town.

Not only do you have the obvious French influence in the architecture but you also have the French feeling bought about by the various street traders and buskers and street entertainers. Narrow alley ways were full of hanging paintings by local artists peddling their wares to the general public. The standard of busker is way beyond what we would get back in the UK, here they sang serious opera and they sang it well. We had harp players and blues trumpet players all extremely talented.filling the streets with beautiful melody.

We walked into cathedrals from the 1600's with familiar names such as Notre Dame, passed cast iron water fountains on the streets modelled in the style of the deco metro in Paris. Even the street lights had that Parisian arts and crafts look to them with their perfect warm globe arms lighting up the street beneath them, its real picture postcard perfect here and once more its packed to the rafters with tourists, you almost cant move for them.

What makes this place more European though than anything else we have seen here in Canada is the actual streets themselves. Gone is the grid system so loved by Americans and the planning department of Milton Keynes to be replaced by twisting and turning narrow roads with junctions everywhere, far more like Europe. It really does make a huge visual difference though as you realise that all the town dual carriageways have gone, the overhead traffic lights have gone and suddenly all the roads have names rather than numbers and the city is not filled with avenues or streets, these are roads or rue as the french canadians call them.

Québec itself appears to be built on a hill and this played a big part in its chequered ownership but more of that later but what this means right now is that there are steps and hills everywhere in Québec so the town is kind of divided into three sections, the lower, mid and top level of the city. We were staying in the top level and spent half the day slowly making our way down to the bottom taking in all the sites as we went. Québec is also the only walled city in Northern America and as such is actually a world unesco heritage site and being here you can certainly understand why that is.

Our walk eventually took us outside of the cities gates and walls out into the area around Parliament Hill (just like Ottawa). In Canadas history there have been three capitals. Toronto, Quebec and then finally Ottawa. The capital hill buildings here in Québec are just as impressive as those in Ottawa. All doric columns and stone but this time adorned in bronzes of famous historial figures that have held a place in Canada's history.

Now there is actually a festival going on here in Québec this week so this meant that we were not actually able to get to all the places that we wanted to go, like the battlefields where the English and the French fought over sovereignty of Canada but we did manage to make it up to the citadel, a lasting legacy of the wars that have been fought over Canada throughout the years.

The Citadelle as the fort is called, is often referred to as the Gibraltar of the North of America.The first similarity that you see is that it does sit high up on a rock facing down on all that is around it. The Citadelle is a unique military site with over 300 years of history. In a nutshell the French discovered Canada and called it New France (not very imaginative that really is it?). The English invaded from the west and eventually struck up an agreement with the French for a shared land under English sovereignty. Then the Americans decided that they wanted a bit of Canada so they invaded too and that is why the citadelle fort was built. The English recognised that its relationship with the French was hardly secure and although the Americans had failed once to gain control of Canada they were always going to try again so Quebec needed to protect itself so an impregnable fort was built and huge financial cost to the British.

This fort still is a working barracks today and is now home to the 22e regiment and come complete wit a regular changing of the guard ceremony complete with red formal unifirm jackets and beaver skin helmets. They also even do a beat retreat drum ceremony in the summer months so they are very into their military history.

We had wanted originally to walk the ancient city walls but due to the festival being in town we could not get access to them so had to settle with the odd look out post.

So we had now been out on our feet for a good seven hours and it was time for some down time so we headed back to the hotel and its air conditioning for a few hours before getting changed and heading out for a well deserved nice meal.

Tonight it was the turn of an Italian restaurant to fill our bellies and we went the whole hog, three courses and a bottle of wine making a real occasion of it.

Québec is one of those cities that oozes romance like they say Paris does, its quirky and relaxing and you know that you could just sit down in one of the pavement bars and be quite happy for the rest of the day. It's a place that you would definitely come back to if given half the chance even if it was just to soak up some more of that lovely atmosphere.

We actually ended up probably doing too much today having walked all of the old city and some of the new so there is actually nothing left on the list for tomorrow (think we got a bit carried away). The good news is as we went to turn the light out on what had been a great day Trevor was not moaning about his arm and Jonathan was not moaning about his belly.......old age eh? It was always going to happen one day !

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