Farnsniente

On the plane ready to leave Ottawa

Though the rain from Ottawa to La Malbaie

—

in
📍 La Malbaie, Québec

Photos

Trip index

Summary

We flew from Ottawa to Québec City, immediately got rental car, and headed to the Charlevoix region to the north of Quebec. It rained all day. Stopped for an unintentionally long lunch at La Cage Sports Bar then headed to La Malbaie and the beautiful Fairmont Le Manoir Richelieu. After a cocktail in the very nice bar overlooking the Saint Lawrence River, we had dinner in one of the hotel’s restaurants, the Bellerive. We had a 9:00-11:30 astronomy education and stargazing evening booked. Due to the rain it turned out to be an all-indoors lengthy quiz (Scott got 1st place, Karen got 2nd) followed by a slide show. Rather disappointing!

Details

OK. We’ve been in Ottawa one full day, time to move on. Time to fly further east. Today we fly to Quebec, aka Quebec City (to differentiate it from the province of Quebec, maybe?). When we wake up it’s still drizzly, so maybe it’s a good thing we’re moving on. We’ve agreed we won’t have breakfast in the hotel but rather will get to the airport early and eat there. 

We check out and rustle up an Uber to the airport. This time our fun, personable driver is from Cameroon. Each of our African Uber drivers is happy that we’re Americans AND we are aware that Africa isn’t a country. We have a rollicking good time chatting with him all the way to the airport. 

We get our printed boarding pass from a kiosk robot who offers to check our luggage for CA$40 each. We tell the robot “no, thanks”. We get through security and find a good place for a casual breakfast. At the gate we casually ask the women behind the counter whether they think our roll-aboard carryon luggage will work on the airplane (a prop plane with two seats on either side of a single row).

It’s really a small plane. They tell us we can test our luggage on the little ‘size checker’ device about 2” from us. They don’t want to say “No way on God’s green earth will those things fit” but are polite and let us find out for ourselves something we already know. Then the offer to check them for us. For free. For all four of us. CA$160 saved. Yes, please and thank you. 

On the plane it’s not too full but our roll-boards would never have fit. The flight attendant is very nice and takes our pictures. 

Once in Quebec the language differences are quickly apparent. Many signs are only in French. And if they’re in English and French the French is first and bigger. We’re minorities here. 

We get our rental car, a bright blue VW Taos, which is a right good sized car. It comfortably fits all four of us and our luggage. We start our long drive up to La Malbaie, which is a good ways away. In no time it’s raining cats and dogs. We drive a long way in the rain, most of the time not really sure where our lane of traffic on the freeway is.

For lunch we stop at La Cage. Our familiarity with that name is from the Broadway production of La Cage Au Folle. This is different. A Cage is a term for the goal in hockey. It’s a sports bar with lots of TVs showing different sports. The waitress is very friendly, a trend we’re detecting from the people in this part of the world. The food is very good and healthy (though the menu has all levels of healthy and unhealthy options). 

We drive on and encounter more rain. And we go along the coast for a while and then inland and uphill, up into the low clouds. Not much to see. Tomorrow should be sunny and clear, and perhaps washed of smoke by all this rain. 

We stop for groceries and eventually get to our hotel. Yet another of the Fairmont hotels. This one has a golf course, and a casino, neither of which we think we’ll be using. We unpack and head down for afternoon cocktails and then dinner. 

After eating we head back out in the car. We’re going to a star gazing session we’d planned for a long time. We’re all paid up but of course with heavy rains one can be assured of seeing very few stars. You can cancel for a full refund up to three hours before the event, or stick it out and get 20% refunded, which is what we do. We have fun and learn a lot.

There is an English language portion of the show and then a “both teams” English and French part, where they say some things in French and then repeat them in English. It was hard as the main guy’s English was almost as hard to decipher as his French. They had such love for the subject we stuck it out. What it lacked in star gazing they tried to make up for in duration, so we didn’t get back to the hotel until well after 11 p.m. We’d been ready to sleep for a while. 

Photos

Still raining in Ottawa, time to head to points east: Quebéc
Karen ate the eggs and bacon from her breakfast but left the starchy tater tots. I helped out the best I could.
Time to board the plane. It’s such a cute plane we all stop to take a picture.
Getting on board Melody does her best Richard Nixon imitation. You can see that it’s a pretty small plane It’s barely as tall as a person.
Settled in, the kind flight attendant offers to take our picture.
Off the plane in Québec we see vending machines, including one managed by some First Nations people with very interesting things on offer.
At lunch we have a great meal but are temporarily puzzled by the wooden nest looking things suspended from the ceiling. Ah, yes, they’re all hockey sticks. These people loves them some hockey.
A great lunch at La Cage. This is my salad. Delicious and healthy.
On our drive we stop at a grocery store to stock up on other munchies and some healthy groceries, too.
Continuing our drive we’re pelted by rain and then enshrouded by dense fog. Once we’re out of the fog we can see more fog coming in from off the coast, from the Saint Lawrence River.
Even when we arrive at the Fairmont Le Manoir Richelieu it’s still quite foggy. There’s no seeing the river for now. We’re up on the floor with the gable windows.
The lobby and sitting areas are wonderfully large and regal. Karen’s headed up by elevator our floor.
Our room.
Dinner: Piri-Piri Chicken. Quite good.
On to the evening’s entertainment. All things space. These are “impactites” which are formed by a meteor hitting some big rock and sending waved of impact down in a cone fashion.
Our two hosts for the evening explaining how they decide if we can go outside or not, based on cloud cover, rain, wind, smoke, temperature, scintillation, and, and, and. Bottom line, we’re not going out tonight. Instead we get a long slide-show/lecture on the origin of the universe and everything thereafter. We see lots of interesting nebula. These guys love their subject.