People seem to sleep late here in Old City Quebec since even the cafes don’t open for breakfast! We had a bit of a late start as well, before heading down to the ‘lower city’ to see what was down there.
Quebec City has a walled section, which is now full of hotels and shops and tourists. Directly below the high ramparts on the river side is another concentration of shops and restaurants – similar to those above – catering to tourists as well. We wandered around like people tired after an active week and purchased nougat and Tintin postcards!
There’s a few ways up/down between the upper and lower cities, but the most direct walking route is a staircase called the ‘breakneck steps’. When it came time to return to the promenade, we chose the funicular 🙂
There’s a fort (Le Citadelle) not far from the hotel, and Jim and I visited it when we were here years ago. We weren’t going to go this time but I learned they had a temporary exhibit on tabletop war gaming so in the afternoon I went and had a look. The exhibit was small but had some nice artifacts, although I would have preferred more info about each.
Many board games were showcased, including the above one from over 60 years ago. It brought back memories of Bernard and I trying to play a similar insanely complicated wargame (Blitzkreig) that we someone obtained as kids. I’m sure we ignored most of the rules 🙂
After the wargame exhibit I got sucked into their wider museum and spent an hour or so reading all about the Canadian contributions to the world wars and afterwards. I liked the above photo showing the allied leaders during WW2. It was taken very close to the Citadel, and shows our hotel in the background.
Today our Canadian excursion comes to an end! As with any vacation this means the return to ‘normal’ life, but we’ve got one more night in a hotel before we see our kitties again…
