The next day, we again headed into the old city to have breakfast, this time more budget-conscious at L’Omelette. We continued walking around aimlessly in Basse-Ville and we bought “Effigies”. These medallion things were the admission to the pay events for the New France Festival, but we ended up only going into a couple of them (and they weren’t all that interesting). We came across the Chevalier House and went through it to get an idea of how (rich) people lived in Quebec from the 18^th century on, and then walked around the Quartier Petit Champlain.

Around lunch time, we met Joe’s co-worker Cedric and he recommended going to Cafée du Monde for lunch. After lunch, we couldn’t decide what more to do so we headed back to the hotel to change and rest. For dinner, we had reservations at Le Champlain at Chateau Frontenac. We lucked out because our reservations allowed us to get good seats with a view of the St Lawrence, rather than within the dining room; but we arrived a little too late (8PM). So after the appetizers, I gave up with taking pictures. Dinner took us 3 hours (!) and by the time we were done, the old city was dark and the lights were on. It was pretty and European, and very unlike Toronto. We walked “directly” back to the parking lot, but really it was in a round about fashion because certain people are cheap drunks.

The next day, we checked out of the hotel early and drove back to Montreal. On the way back, we again drove through rain, except this storm lasted something like 200km until we were within Montreal! We stopped over for two surgical tourist visits. The first was Schwartz which everyone always talks about going. I was surprised how it was really a hole in the wall type place for all the buzz it gets. We walked in and were able to get seats right away, thanks to showing up at 11:30. But the time we were finished however, there was a huge line up stretching along the street to get in. I didn’t think Schwartz was as good as Katz’s Deli, although there was a significant difference between the lean and the medium (medium is better).

After Schwartz, we went to Saint Joseph’s Oratory. We didn’t really know how to get there, were too lazy to look in the guidebooks, and couldn’t find it on the GPS; so with a rough idea we kind of drove around the Mont Royal region. That didn’t work to well, because while it was on the hill, it wasn’t really at the top. I thought this was a pretty nice church, because it was a departure from the stone churches that you see in Europe and other places. I liked how the pillars were “smooth” and more modern. I was also surprised at how commercialized the Oratory was. There was the “church” part of course, but there were several floors below that were made specifically for tourists; with souvenir shops and museums. I guess they get a lot of duckling tours through there (actually I remember going there previously on a Chinese tour…).

After that we left and continued our drive back home. The drive wasn’t too bad (aside from being through boring old Ontario) and we didn’t run into any major traffic problems. There were just two instances of where bridges were under construction which backed traffic up for 10-20 minutes, and some cottage country volume after Belleville. We got back by 9PM so the drive from Montreal took about 7 hours.

The trip itself was on the kind of both cheap and expensive. I estimate it to have been not more than $400 with everything in, which is a bit high for a road trip; but we ate in a restaurant for every meal except the one fast food dinner at Montmorency Falls.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: quebec, travelling