Quebec City - first impressions

As Morgan says, our flight left at 6 a.m., which meant leaving the house at 4:30 a.m., and of course I was too worried about missing my alarm to sleep, so I had about an hour's worth of sleep last night. All our travel went remarably smoothly! Flights were on time, lots of time for the transfer in Toronto, no trouble getting a taxi just oustide the Quebec's Jean-Lesage Airport, and no trouble checking in (though we were a bit early and had to wait). The flights were sort of a blur of drifting in and out of consciousness. In the Toronto airport, as we had two hours to wait, we went over a few French phrases in a book I got for Morgan. It really hit home to him that he didn't understand the language while we were sitting in the departure gate waiting to board - 80% of the people around him were speaking French and he looked a bit panicked. He has called Quebec "a foreign country" several times now even though he knows it's part of Canada - but it must be how he is feeling! My French is passable and if I'm not making any headway, the people of Quebec City have so far been more than gracious in helping out!

I did rise from my plane-induced coma long enough to take this photo of one of the Great Lakes:

I thought it was cool. Morgan loved watching the plane descend through the clouds at Quebec City, it was like Harry Potter flying through the clouds in the movies.

Our taxi ride to the hotel was remarkably dangerous but we arrived intact and in record time :) One thing that struck us was that there are very few pickup trucks and full sized SUVs here; cars and small utility vehicles are the norm. From the airport to Vieux Quebec it looked much like any other city I have been to, but once in the older areas, it really is phenomenal. We are currently staying at the Hotel Manoir Victoria and this is the staircase:

I tipped the bellman extra. He schlepped four bags weighing a combined total of 99 pounds up those stairs at a jog - all in one trip. I couldn't do that job. The front desk were fabulous, set us up with the Carnavale effigies (event passes), gave us maps, directions, options, friendly smiles, promises to help with restaurants and other activities, and some great suggestions on travelling around the city. The best suggestion is to take the ecolobus - it's an electric bus that seats only 21 people, but it travels around and around the old part of the city every ten or fifteen minutes. It's only a dollar per person, and it drops us off at the hotel, and also a block from Carnavale (as well as other stops of course). I would recommend most cities look into this!

Our first experience at Carnavale was great! Morgan went tubing (four big sculpted runs):

Played human foosball (I've realized that the people of Quebec are tough - in this game they are tied to metal poles in subzero temperatures, with complete ice underfoot, strapped in with leather belts, no padding; they don't wear helmets to go tubing or go on the ice slide, nor on the zip line, nor skating):

And watched amazing fireworks set to live rock music:

We will be going back to check out the progress on the snow sculptures, really amazing. The ice sculptures weren't as grand as I thought, but that's okay - everything else has been fantastic! Morgan has had some great new experiences including traditional music, some Canadian history firsthand, and trying (and loving) his first Beaver Tail :)  :

And just because they are amazing, here are two photos from our hotel room. The first one shows  a ship moving through the St. Lawrence Seaway in the background, along with a mousy giant warehouse on the far left. The second is an art installation on that same crappy warehouse/port building by night. It's based on the Aurora Borealis and I wish I could post a video that shows how the colours dance across this normally non-descript giant building. The walls of the building are what looked like coloured water here:

And here is one just for the family. We miss Kim, the dog, the cat, and the house, but so far are having a great time :)

Carol-Lynne