I got down to thinking today about how initially I wanted to write my blog partly to chronicle my adventures, and partly to provide useful information on travels, like how I remember one of my early France posts about buying train tickets. I don't recall the content of that specific blog, but I know that if I go to France and take the train again, I will consult it. It seems that now I mainly just write about the things I do, which 90% of the time I think are rather unexciting anyway, which makes me sad. I'll try to refocus too, but maybe the problem too is that few of my experiences would necessarily be "helpful".
Anyhow, we spent a beautiful day in Québec City. The weather was great, the skies were blue. When we arrived, it was lunch time, and we found ourselves at La Boîte à Pain, a bakery in what seemed a fairly run down neighbourhood (something light and well reviewed on Yelp). We street parked, paid for the meter (meters there ran late, until 9pm!!), and went to the bakery. Turns out there was a festival occurring on the street that the bakery was on, which was very happening. Unfortunately we had no CAD$, so we passed on eating along the way (on the one short block). The bakery sold mainly bread, but had some pastries, sandwiches, salads, etc. I got myself a quiche and a small artichoke salad. Absolutely loved the crust of the quiche, and the filling was good too - not too rich, not too dense or fluffy, and just the right amount o salt. The artichoke salad was alright, mainly because I did not love peppers. Lingon got a ham and cheese panini, and I must say, the quality of the bread was really great. Note: the restaurant does not take credit cards. It takes debit cards, but somehow both ours (USA debit cards) did not work. We ended up giving them USD, which was sad, but thankfully it was not an extravagant meal.
We walked around the historical/old town. I had been here years before for spring break with some friends in March, and how different it was. The parks were luscious, I was not layered up in winter gear. Simply splendid. I described the town as being like Disneyland to Lingon, and he said Canadians would not like that since Disney had a US connotation to it, but I still maintain it does look like Disneyland. And that's a great thing - it's the happiest place on earth! A lot of European influence, with murals on the face of buildings, narrow cobbled stone streets, little squares/parks/plazas with musicians and street hawkers, old buildings with beautiful architecture, and a funicular (thinking Montmartre in Paris). So lovely.
After that, we checked in at our hotel, the Four Points by Sheraton Québec Resort, which was a little bit outside of town, since neither of the two Starwood properties were in the vicinity of the town. We had an upgrade to a suite of some kind, which included a ginormous bathroom that could probably have been made into its own room. The room itself was not spectacular, but the beds were super comfortable. ZZZzzz. We used the gym, which was small and had one bike, one elliptical, one treadmill, and some weights stuff, for a little while, and then off to dinner.
Since we were in a French area, we decided we wanted to eat something French, and picked Le Billig, a crêpe restaurant that had good reviews on Yelp. We have been eating pretty much non-stop, so we tried to be healthy-ish and shared a bacon salad (not so healthy!) and crêpe. The crepe had this amazing onion marmalade, perfectly caramelized and super sweet. Yum yum. We learned that a billig was the name of the flat crêpe pans in old French.
The next morning, we went for our continental breakfast. I must say, in the realm of free Starwood breakfasts, this must have been one of the worst. They had a tiny little jar of yoghurt with granola on top, some rather mediocre fruit, and one of the worst croissants I have ever tasted - I'm not that fussy about pastry, but these tasted really weird, like perhaps full of preservatives or some other weird flavour. Dislike.
Then, off to our next journey. Bye bye Québec, so glad I had another chance to see you!
Anyhow, we spent a beautiful day in Québec City. The weather was great, the skies were blue. When we arrived, it was lunch time, and we found ourselves at La Boîte à Pain, a bakery in what seemed a fairly run down neighbourhood (something light and well reviewed on Yelp). We street parked, paid for the meter (meters there ran late, until 9pm!!), and went to the bakery. Turns out there was a festival occurring on the street that the bakery was on, which was very happening. Unfortunately we had no CAD$, so we passed on eating along the way (on the one short block). The bakery sold mainly bread, but had some pastries, sandwiches, salads, etc. I got myself a quiche and a small artichoke salad. Absolutely loved the crust of the quiche, and the filling was good too - not too rich, not too dense or fluffy, and just the right amount o salt. The artichoke salad was alright, mainly because I did not love peppers. Lingon got a ham and cheese panini, and I must say, the quality of the bread was really great. Note: the restaurant does not take credit cards. It takes debit cards, but somehow both ours (USA debit cards) did not work. We ended up giving them USD, which was sad, but thankfully it was not an extravagant meal.
We walked around the historical/old town. I had been here years before for spring break with some friends in March, and how different it was. The parks were luscious, I was not layered up in winter gear. Simply splendid. I described the town as being like Disneyland to Lingon, and he said Canadians would not like that since Disney had a US connotation to it, but I still maintain it does look like Disneyland. And that's a great thing - it's the happiest place on earth! A lot of European influence, with murals on the face of buildings, narrow cobbled stone streets, little squares/parks/plazas with musicians and street hawkers, old buildings with beautiful architecture, and a funicular (thinking Montmartre in Paris). So lovely.
After that, we checked in at our hotel, the Four Points by Sheraton Québec Resort, which was a little bit outside of town, since neither of the two Starwood properties were in the vicinity of the town. We had an upgrade to a suite of some kind, which included a ginormous bathroom that could probably have been made into its own room. The room itself was not spectacular, but the beds were super comfortable. ZZZzzz. We used the gym, which was small and had one bike, one elliptical, one treadmill, and some weights stuff, for a little while, and then off to dinner.
Since we were in a French area, we decided we wanted to eat something French, and picked Le Billig, a crêpe restaurant that had good reviews on Yelp. We have been eating pretty much non-stop, so we tried to be healthy-ish and shared a bacon salad (not so healthy!) and crêpe. The crepe had this amazing onion marmalade, perfectly caramelized and super sweet. Yum yum. We learned that a billig was the name of the flat crêpe pans in old French.
The next morning, we went for our continental breakfast. I must say, in the realm of free Starwood breakfasts, this must have been one of the worst. They had a tiny little jar of yoghurt with granola on top, some rather mediocre fruit, and one of the worst croissants I have ever tasted - I'm not that fussy about pastry, but these tasted really weird, like perhaps full of preservatives or some other weird flavour. Dislike.
Then, off to our next journey. Bye bye Québec, so glad I had another chance to see you!
