Ruminations: Through the Adirondacks to Quebec

Another hard day of driving.  I made it to Quebec City but I'm going to stop doing 400-500 mile days and break things up a bit. First the drive: It was all right in the beginning as I drove out of the beautiful Catskills. Then it got kind of boring past Albany and then I hit the Adirondacks.  Isolation on a grand scale up there. It seems to go on forever. Beautiful country though. I took a couple of pictures but they didn't come out very well. I'm abandoing my camera and use my phone instead. I seem to be getting better shots from it and I have it on me anyway. Anyway, after the Adirondacks your drive another 70 miles or so and then you hit Canada. That 75 miles is flat and boring and so was the next 3 1/2 hours from the border to Quebec.

Quebec is a little like Monmartre and a little like Amsterdam. Like Montmartre it has many hills and stairs and little windy alley ways. Also there are artist selling their work from stalls in these little streets. But it is older than Montmartre (Quebec was founded in 1608) and in that respect it reminds me of Amterdam. It's also a port city.

People speak French here and sometimes I even manage to understand them. Sometimes they understand me too. The accent is really different from the French I'm used to hearing in Paris and the Provence. My French is limited under the best of circumstances, but this accent makes it more difficult.

I'm staying in a Hotel just outside of "Vieux Quebec", since the hotels within the walls are very expensive. The hotel is OK, still kind of expensive, but not quite as bad.  In general I find this an expensive city. The smallest meal ends up costing $15-$20 (the US and Canadian dollars are basically at par at the moment), Reasonably nice hotels are minimally in the $120-$200 range. A good meal with wine (I had one last night) is well over $100.

But the hotel is a 5 minute walk from the "Ecolobus". It is sort of like the Monmartrebus, which is a little bus that takes you all around Montmartre for a Euro or two. This one takes you all the way around the old city for one dollar. People tell me that when they started this service, these were smaller electric buses. Hence "eco" in the name.  Apparently these electric buses broke down a lot (perhaps because of the extra strain caused by all those hills?) and so the city got rid of them and they now run the route with regular buses. Driving in the old city makes no sense. Just like in Amsterdam or in Monmartre.

The city was a French colony from its founding in 1608 to 1760 or so and then the British defeated the French in a bloody battle and it became a British colony. So the oldest parts of the city (in the lower part by the river) have more of a French feel to them whereas the upper parts are more British. The Brtis stationed armies here. Some of these were outsourced armies: Irish, Scottish, Welsh, German and Flemish.  Each army had to have their church of course and so this city has a LOT of churches and by far not all of them are Catholic (which you would expect in this French speaking part of the world). Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran what have you is all represented.

I'll tell more later. Here are some pictures. You might need to enlarge them to get the proper effects.