Summary
We spent pretty much the whole day walking around both lower and upper Old Québec with lots and lots of stairs. It’s such a gorgeous city with well preserved buildings and a very European/French feel. French is the primary language spoken here but it’s different enough from the French we know that we have a hard time understanding it. It was the last day of the New France Festival so we explored the exhibits and enjoyed the locals in authentic 17th century costumes.
Details
Our first full day in Quebec. We wake and find it’s cool but clammy in our room. My thermometer/hygrometer says it’s in the upper 60s with a humidity in the mid 90s. Ugh. During dinner we’d received an email from the hotel which in essence said “The A/C is not working properly and it’s affecting many of the rooms… we feel just awful… we’re doing all we can… update when we have one.” Ugh. At least it’s cool and what we want to do today is all outside our room.
We’re here in Québec in part to see the Festival de la Nouvelle France. It started a few days ago and today’s the last day, though it’s our first. Thankfully we start to see things connected to the festival as soon as we’re walking down the street. The more we walk the more we see. There’s lots of people in period costume. We see natives and fur trappers. There’s a display with all the various furs they trap so we can feel how thick and soft they are, (or aren’t), depending on the animal. There’s a forest of abbreviated trees with head phones so that we can hear the different native languages spoken around here.
Further along we find a very long row of cabins/booths where venders are selling arts and crafts and soaps, etc. The group is intrigued and spends quite a while giving them their due. Further along we found what appears to be the heart (one of the hearts) of the festival. It’s a big square in front of the town hall and it’s chock-a-block full of demonstration booths, more vendors, food booths, and so many people in period costume.
We later learn that this is something like the 29th year they’ve done this festival. The costumes get annual use and they’re all extremely authentic. The ladies like parading around in their gowns and then gentlemen likewise. There are the gentry but also the peasants, trappers, farm workers, millers, and other laborers, all in appropriate costume. It’s a lot of fun and it’s well attended.
More than one booth is someone offering to tell you about your family name and what they were doing around the time of the founding of Nouvelle France. Karen recently learned that one of her great-grandmothers was French Canadian (and as such Karen may be able to get Canadian citizenship). Karen engages one of the genealogists to do research into Karen’s forefathers (or I guess in this case, foremothers).
At lunch time we install ourselves into seats outside at a British pub. Our waiter is a hoot and the food is excellent (as is the beer). The weather holds until the very end (the paying the check part) when the skies open, first a little and later a lot. We’re able to close out our tab and get into a store before we get too wet.
After lunch we do our usual walking to settle the food. We wander over to another part of Quebec that’s well know, and well loved, by the tourists. It’s full of shops and restaurants and there’s more than enough to keep our interest. Eventually we scurry back to the festival to partake of our mystery tour of the city. It’s part scavenger hunt and part historical reenactment. It’s up to us to read the clues and figure out where to go next, and once we get there we encounter someone “from the past” in costume.
That person then commences to relate to us a long story of their life and woes. It’s good fun and the actors are really talented (undoubtedly real actors). We paid for this weeks ago and each of the four of us has a sticker on our chest identifying us as having paid. What I missed is that the color of our sticker tells the actor whether they should do their story in English or en Français. I was just impressed they could just look at us and know we speak English.
Show over, we chill in the room a bit and then walk to dinner at La Lapin Sauté (the sautéed rabbit). We all have rabbit or duck or some other cute animal and they’re delicious. The waiter, like all we’ve encountered, is fun and nice. After dinner, stuffed, we walk some more. We try to settle our dinner, burn off one or two calories, and enjoy the delightfully cool evening air. We know it’s not like this back home.
Photos
