Enjoy charm, history, music, adventure and great food – all with a French accent -during a weekend rail trip to Quebec City in Quebec province, Canada.
Many Americans think of Francophone Canada as a way to get a slice of Europe that’s much closer to home, but you’ll soon find that it has a unique charm of its own. Quebec City (QC) is a perfect example. Recently we had the opportunity to visit our neighbor to the north, and it was fantastique, albeit too brief.
If you happen to be traveling through Canada, the only way to go is on VIA Rail. Our trip from Montreal to QC was one of the most comfortable rides we’d ever taken, and the scenery was absolutely stunning. To top it off, the food and service were just about as good. The 3½-hour journey was so pleasant that it made us dream of taking a VIA Rail trip west across Canada to Vancouver someday.
Le Vieux et le Nouveau: Old Quebec City
For an introduction to Quebec City, kids will enjoy the 3D multimedia Quebec Experience (8 rue de Tresor, 418/694-4000). You’ll take a thrilling journey through 400 years of history from the Amerindians to the French and English settlers, meeting Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain and others through a sound and image show bursting with animatronics, holograms and amazing special effects.
Most tourists spend their time here in Vieux Quebec (the Old City). The narrow, winding and steep streets, as well as the ancient wall surrounding the old town evoke a European feel. Perhaps too expensive to stay in, but definitely worth a viewing is the Chateau Frontenac, a hotel with castle-like architecture that dominates Quebec City’s skyline. It’s located right above the Funicular, a short, steep cable railway, (a must-do) down to Place Royale in the lower city, which is the site of Nouvelle-France’s first settlement. This well-preserved square is full of shops and restaurants, and is the heart of the city’s artistic activities. Don’t miss La Fresque des Quebecois (Mural of Quebec), an amazing trompe l’oeil work depicting the city’s 400 years of history.
Le Vieux et le Nouveau: New QC
Another great area to explore is rue St.-Jean, which extends past the walls of the old city and gives you a more authentic feel of contemporary Québecois life. Of special interest to kids and chocolate lovers alike is the Erico Chocolate Economuseum (634 rue St.-Jean, 418/524-2122) where everything is made on site, and you can learn the history of chocolate from the ancient Mayan discoveries through the present. Educational yet delicious!
Another great stop is the Maison Jean-Alfred Moisan (699, rue St.-Jean), the oldest grocery store in North America, which has some unique Canadian products like maple syrup and teas.
Québec City is home to many captivating museums, but we only had time for one: Musée de la Civilisation de Quebec (85, rue Dalhousie, 418/643-2158), a combination science, history, and art museum. You could spend an entire day exploring all of its different exhibits (only two are permanent), or pick and choose from the delightfully interactive and engrossing rooms. Exhibits that were there when we visited included an examination of the historic and contemporary life of Canadian Native Americans (Amerindians), a CSI-like Murder Mystery exhibit where we collected clues and learned about how crimes are solved while narrowing down the list of suspects, and an exhibit on democracy. The museum also boasts a comfortable and affordable café, as well as an extensive giftshop.
One of the unique opportunities for families traveling to Quebec during the summer is their fantastic summer festival, Le Festival D’été de Québec featuring live music and street performances on several stages throughout the city. It started small in 1968 when seven artists and a group of businessmen were looking for a way to liven up the city’s parks and squares and promote the popular arts. Since then, it has expanded into a huge 11-day event with performers and visitors from around the world. Now over 1,000 artists perform in all styles to a roving audience in the hundreds of thousands.
Luckily, our trip happened to coincide with the Festival and it really seemed like the whole city came out to hear the music and participate. The activities started in the late afternoon and continued into the evening and were very popular, making for a very lively and celebratory atmosphere. Specially-themed performances and workshops for children take place each afternoon. Canadian love festivals and there are many throughout the year (such as the Montréal’s Jazz Festival and Quebec City’s Winter Carnival), so it’s worth looking into their schedules ahead of time.
A Daytrip out of the New QC
We took an excursion to the outskirts of the city (about 10 minutes by car ) to Montmorency Falls Park (800/665-6527), a breathtaking waterfall that is 1½ times the height of Niagara Falls. A short aerial tramway ride takes you to the top of the mountain, where you can visit Manoir Montmorency whose restaurant offers an incredible view, and a small museum explaining the history of the falls. There is a pedestrian footbridge across the falls (not recommended for any acrophobiacs in your family), and a stairway down to its base.
You could easily spend an entire day here, hiking in the summer and ice climbing and sledding in the winter. Our guide told us that for adventurous and active families, it would be possible to rent a bicycle in the city and bike all the way to the Falls, for a nice day trip.
Planning a QC Weekend Getaway
Within walking distance of the VIA Rail station and many sights is the Hotel Manoir Victoria (44, cote du Palais, 800/463-6283, 418/692-3822), a beautiful, historic hotel with luxurious accommodations. Well-situated in the midst of the Old City, it is near shops and restaurants, surrounded by hundreds of years of culture. Accommodations include 156 rooms and luxury suites, and the hotel is outfitted with a gym, an indoor swimming pool, “Le Spa du Manoir,” a business center, indoor parking and two restaurants. Children are most welcome, and stay free in their parent’s room up to age 18. In the restaurants, children under 6 eat free, and older children to age 12 receive a 50% discount. Video Games are available in the rooms, and babysitting can be arranged through the concierge. Free high-speed Internet (in all rooms) and a whirlpool bath were great perks during our stay. It really is perfect for both a romantic getaway and for families with children of all ages.
It’s hard to find bad food in Québec City, and some of the places we really enjoyed are: La Primavera (73, rue St-Louis, 418/694-0030), a comfortable Italian restaurant in the Old City; Creperie Le Petit Chateau (5, rue St.-Louis, 418/694-1616) featuring unforgettable and mouth-watering crepes and fondues, and Le Petit Cochon Dingue (24, boulevard Champlain, 418/694-0303), meaning “Crazy Little Piggy,” which is what you’ll feel like after sampling the treats at this bakery/café in Cartier-Petit Champlain.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
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I poured my heart and soul into this!!! Hope you people enjoy! =)
Wow, this is wonderful! You are so lucky to have gotten this opportunity. You looked absolutely gorgeous at the show and the red carpet. Thanks for sharing this, it really made me smile. I used to have the biggest crush on Joe Jonas.. hahah!
Amazing trip!
I hope that my story will inspire and enrich your lives; even if it doesn’t touch you as much as it has touched me. I hope that this will be passed on and that people will take a few minutes just to read what I had to say and try to be in the mind of these children. Try to change your day and see your house, your possessions, your income, and those many great things that you possess and find a way to share them with others. We all need a wakeup call sometimes, a message to straighten us out and look at the life we were given. I hope to go back next year to repeat the experience all over again and try to change myself even more, I love those children and I love their compassion and selflessness. Words can’t fully express what I felt or what I witnessed but my words are clear, these people see the world much differently than us, they treat possessions differently and they know how to work as a community.
This is about when my family and I took a trip down to Central Florida for our Family Vacation.
Hope you enjoy!
This was a vacation that taught me a lot about how my religion is organzied and gave me more appreciation for it.
I will never forget the time I spent in Germany.
I hope you guys enjoyed my story!
Best luck.
South Africa is this amazing country that not only is beautiful for its animals and scenery but for its people and for its ability to overcome the greatest oppression: apartheid, the discrimination of the majority. I am so glad I was given the gift of traveling to South Africa. It is an experience I will never forget!
It was a great trip!
I hope everyone who takes the time to read The Awakening enjoys learning about my bus ride to reality.
My typed essay about my vacation in Vietnam. It seem poorly written or should I say typed :\
Bryan Gray Europe Tour.
My vacation to Panama became suprisingly meaningful, contrary to what I had initially expected.
Thank you
This was a fun and yet difficult project i truely have enjoyed sharing my vaction with you.
Mahalo,
Have you ever been to Maine? What did you like best?
This is such an amazing story and essay!!
Their were many more memories from this trip that impacted me as much as the ones that were included, but I just didnt have enough room. So, I shortened it and tried to write the best description of the trip without exceeding the word limit. But the trip was, indeed, as remarkable as I said it was.
Washington is a really nice place. It has many museums and historical places. it also has very delicious foods. Chinatown was my favorite place to eat.
Thank you for this scholarship opportunity!
IB York was a great experience, and a great opportunity to explore new ideas and innovations
So now I head to college without my classmates but i will always have this wonderful experience.
🙂
This is one of my many travel adventure stories from my trip to Europe in the beginning of the summer. Besides Prague, I traveled to Berlin, Munuch, and Nuremberg in Germany, Innsbruck in Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and France. My favorite place was Switzerland, but my favorite story was the one I shared. I hope you enoy reading it as much as i enjoyed experiencing it!
I want everyone to be able to expericence something like I did.:) Everyone desevers happines!
I hope you enjoyed my travel blog and I hope you plan to take your mom to the Peaks of Otter Lodge for the best brunch you will ever eat. For more information click on this link:
http://www.peaksofotter.com/
Finished product. I love PERU!
This eye-opening opportunity has shaped my conviction toward making change and developing the community. It is a great pleasure to meet all those Leadership Award Honorees and other49 ANNpower fellows from 24 states in the U.S. I will continue to make change and build a dynamic community, excursively to ethnic, social, political gender aspects of advantage, as my milestone to become a great leader!
This eye-opening opportunity marks the culmination of my junior year. I am so glad to meet all those wonderful women leaders from all around the world and 49 other ANNpower fellows from other 24 states. I will continue to explore the world and make change with eagerness and confident, and overcoming disadvantage exclusively toward the milestone of a great leader!
I hope everyone enjoys my trip to Catalina and Ensenada!
This trip was the best trip regarding family time. It is unforgettable.
To see more photography from the trip, check out my photojournal: http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Photojournal-of-My-Grecian-Travels/213497035367351.
What a testimony!! Thanks for posting. You don't know how impactful this is. Let Jesus keep using you for His glory. 😉
I was saved in August of 2009. I was in my parents's room and we all prayed for m, becuase I was tired of not having a desire for God. There I gave my life to Him and let Him be my Lord. I already excepted Him as Savior, but though it was a license to sin. Thatt day, though I wanted to repent of my sin and let God lead me. Lord and Savior go hand-in-hand. My life is changed. Now I have convictions and am learning so much about seeking God, because He is seeking me. It's awesome to live in the security and hope of knowing I will see Him one day in heaven. I am so glad He lives in me, because my goodness outside of Him is nothing. I don't know what I would do without Him.
Jesus used that park to bring you and your dad back together. How beautiful 🙂
Each place I go, I leave a peice of myself. And everyplace I go leaves a peice of itself in me. The people I have met along the way have changed me in the deepest way. Their lives have touched mine and I can never return to life as was usual. Likewise, my life has touched many along the way. It is my hope that nobody I meet along the way may return to life as was their usual. This is how each thead pulls coth and fabric together as we the people of the world cover it like a quilt. We must double stitch each peice so not to fall apart or leave holes. We need one another.
To whoever reading this, I am the person wearing blue shirt and white shorts, sligtly leaning on the panda bear statue.
My essay that talks about my experience traveling to Lima, Peru aims toward encouraging others who are not too familiar with it to visit and appreciate the fun life changing experience they're gauranteed to get.
What a great contest! Hope to see lots of terrific teen travel stories here!
It was difficult for me to type a 600 word blog about an amazing experience I had in the month of July. It was also difficult for me to choose certain pictures from the ones that I have chosen, so I uploaded the pictures of my time at NeiHu elementary school. I really wished that I could have used more sightseeing photos, but unfortunately, those were too big to upload.
This trip was amazing and it also tested who I am becoming as a person. Seeing the woman in Central Park living out her dream, to the woman selling fruit throughout the day; New York is made of dreamers and hardworking people. I loved it. Hope I get the chance to go back.
This was an amazing experience! I am so grateful for everything it taught me!!
From research, I believe the ice cream shop was called Eisdiele Eddy. More information about the exchange program can be found at http://www.aatg.org/study-trip-faq as well as at the bottom of the page at http://www.aatg.org/NGE-awards.
These Picutures are both of my own creation (one being an acrylic painting). When I took this picture at the western wall in Israel, the man in the photo was crying his heart out wearing a tattered down bath robe, I thought it would make for an intersting picture. So it did, it also inspired to me to create a painting in which I showed the world what I believe he really is. A man who is down on his luck but seems to still find peace in his life.
My sophomore year of high school I went to Donner Pass in California with a group called The Woods Project (www.thewoodsproject.org) . I had to apply to go , I was really anxious and scared that I wasn’t going to get. When I got my acceptance letter I was excited. I was also nervous because I had never been away from home for more than a week and The Woods project was going to last for two weeks. I had chosen to go to Donner Pass because I wanted to experience something new. I was going to go backpacking for one week and hiking the other. I had never gone backpacking before. When I told my friends that I was going backpacking they started to laugh because I am the smallest girl in my whole school and they didn’t think I was going to make it. Getting that response from my friends made me super scared of going to the trip. I thought I was going to die while backpacking!
My dad went to go drop me off at the airport and then he left. I was already scared and freaking out at the fact that he had just left me there and I did not know anybody! . I got in the plane to California and I was already regretting going on the trip. I was going to be with complete strangers for two weeks! When we got to California we all got split .There were three groups going to different places, one to Yosemite, another to Marine Headlines and then mine, to Donner Pass. I got in a van and that’s where I met the people who I was going to spend two weeks with. We were in that van for hours! When we finally got to our cabin we had to go up a hill to get to the door.
The first cabin we stayed in was named Clair Tappan Lodge. It was really nice . It was made out of wood, had a pool table, personal chef, jacuzzi and hot water in the showers. I loved it there! Too bad it only lasted for two days then it was time to go backpacking. They gave us our backpacking materials. I tried on the backpack and almost fell over. My backpacking week had started. We went up and down mountains, through rivers and lakes, and I thought we were never going to set up our tents. When it started to get dark we finally started cooking. The food we had was not good at all. We couldn’t bring a lot of food because of the bears and other animals. My second day of backpacking went better than the first. Everybody in my group started to know each other better and soon we became really close. We would sing while backpacking to make time pass faster and at night we didn’t want to sleep because we would play games. While backpacking I got to experience many things I hadn’t before. Even though I was the smallest girl going backpacking I was always the leader of the line because of my stamina.
When our backpacking week ended it was time to hike. I had gotten the hardest part of the trip over with so I knew hiking was going to be a piece of cake. We would hike in the morning and hanged out at night. It was the best experience I had ever had! When it was time to go back home I didn’t want to because I knew I would miss my friends.
To watch my video go to : http://youtu.be/FLd7W71EnyU
My experience as a first time camper.
i hope i win