Road Trip to Canada & Maine: Quebec City
We have recently returned from our annual road trip, 8 kids, 2 parents in a 12-passenger van! This year we traveled from Illinois through Michigan to Niagara Falls across Canada through Toronto and Montreal to Quebec City. (We then traveled through Maine to Boston and back across to Illinois.) I will return in a couple of weeks with a special post on our Niagara Falls adventure. Today I’ll share about our time in Quebec City.
We arrived in Quebec City, quite late in the evening. Once we got into the province of Quebec, we noticed that the signs were no longer bilingual, just in French. We got some carry-out pizza at a local pizza parlor in the downtown area where we were staying. My husband brought the pizza back to his hungering brood at the hotel, and we all piled in the boys’ room to watch the Blackhawks win game 5! Later, he asked the hotel manager when Quebec will split off from Canada and form their own country. He said, “Soon, I hope.”
We checked out of the hotel the next morning and packed the van before heading out on our Quebec City tour. We had a walking map of the city and also received some help from a very nice local man who seemed to walk the streets looking for tourists to assist! We walked to a wonderful restaurant called Benedictine and had a delicious breakfast: crepes, eggs benedict, and fancy fruit. The kids especially liked the goose made of apples.
We then continued our walk to the old city, which was packed with people.
What a neat place! I really felt like I was in an old town in Europe. First, we walked through part of the old city wall. We went into a couple of cathedrals (it was Sunday morning and they were holding services). There were shops galore. Over by the waterfront was a boardwalk. If we had had more time, we would have studied more about what we were seeing and spent more time exploring certain sites and buildings. I highly recommend a visit to old Quebec City if you ever get the chance.
The city wall:
La Boutique de Noel
St. Lawrence River
When we returned to our van at about 1 p.m. It was time to drive to Maine. Join us next time for: Maine!
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What an amazing vacation! And, with eight children…wow! We always took our older seven camping, and we never left state. It was more of a convenience/financial choice at the time. I sure can respect the work that goes into making a vacation like that happen. What wonderful memories you are creating. Go mama!
My husband has suggested that we do the camping thing for our road trip next year, but that’s going to take a lot of convincing for me!
This is one of my absolute favorite places I’ve ever visited. We live in Boston, and every other year we visit a different Canadian province. We were in QC two years ago. I loved looking through your pictures and reliving it! Great blog post! Pinning! Blessings from #EspressosofFaith via #MomtoMomMondayLinkup!
What a great idea–to visit a different province every year. We really would have loved to have had time to make it out to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.