Quebec, Canada by Mel

Hello from Quebec!
We are in French Canada, which means I can speak French! Yeah!
We are staying with Roxane, my cousin, her partner, Kevin (yes another one) and their adorable little girl, Savannah. They live between Montreal and Quebec City, in the small town of Saint Melanie. We arrived here on the 12th of December and will be staying until the 3rd of January when we will be leaving to go back home in Australia.
We are not going to do a day by day retell of our stay, but we’ll talk about the things we visited or did that are worth talking about.
We had a few days doing not much, chatting, catching up on each other’s news, playing board games and just enjoying each other’s company. Those days were great.
We are extremely lucky to have snow! And a fair bit of it for December. The kids have been dreaming of snow all year, so it is great! They did snow angels, built snow people, made a slide with snow and enjoyed the snow as much as possible before going back to sunny and hot Queensland! We did a few walks into the forest around Kev and Rox’s house. It was fun but hard! It is definitely not easy to walk in snow. But the landscapes and the stillness of the forest covered with snow is magnificent.
We also learnt that not all snow is good to make snow people: if it is too cold, it doesn’t stick together. It needs to be a bit wet and close to 0 degrees to stick.
We went to visit a traditional village, called Canadiana (similar to the one we saw in Toronto). This one has another Santa, that we visited and also a small circus act which was very good. They were doing it outside, so with a lot of layers of clothes, which made the acts even more impressive as it is hard to move with so many layers! We had hot wine and enjoyed walking around the village and listening to a group of singers singing Christmas carols.
We visited Montreal a couples of times. We had to do some Christmas shopping, so we did (not the easiest when you don’t know the shops, but we found what we wanted). We found Emma’s Pandora charm for Canada (a maple leave).
We visited the Biodome in Montreal, which is a big area (built where they had the Olympic games in 1976) with 4 different biospheres that you can find in Canada, with a few animals found in those biospheres. We saw some capibara, otters, sloth, fish, beaver, lynx, raccoons and pinguins! It was well done and interesting. We then went to the Planetarium to see a couple of shows about planets, stars and the creation of the universe. There were brilliant shows: I have always loved planetarium and this one is awesome. After that we went to the insectarium, which has some interesting way of showing insects and how insects see, feel and sound which was interesting, and at the end a room full of butterfly. It was a good visit.
The Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal is something to visit. I think it is my favourite church of the whole trip. The church we can see now was built from 1824 to 1829. A lot were added later on: the façade was decorated in 1869 and the interior was redesigned in 1872. The church is regarded as a masterpiece of Gothic Revival architecture. It is amazing. The colours are deep blue, gold and purple. The intricate dark wood carvings are unbelievable and the altar piece is massive, beautiful and a masterpiece. This is truly a must see when you are in Montreal.
One of the other things we did in Montreal was going the see the Nutcracker. The ballet was enchanting and magical. I preferred the second part with all the different dances from all around the world. I am very happy to have finally see it as it was on my to do list for a while! One more thing ticked!
We also visited the art museum in Joliette, a little town near Sainte-Melanie. It was a mix of mostly modern art and a few older pieces. There were installations, paintings and multimedia pieces. Some of the multimedia pieces were intriguing and Andrew was transfixed by one of them, showing people dressed up in strange clothes and making noises, repeating again and again. I am not sure what it meant (even after reading the description) but Andrew was transfixed by it.
Both kids were inspired and there was a room with drawing material which the kids had fun using.
In the same spirit of creation, a few days before Christmas, Rox, Savannah, Emma and I did some Christmas ornaments and decorated cookies and a gingerbread house. Emma impressed me with her care at decorating her reindeer decoration. Savannah had a special technique for decorating her cookie: she put some icing on it, then lick it, then put some more and repeat! She had great fun!!
During this time, Andrew had fun learning to cut wood and I think he enjoyed it.
We also went ice-skating, but not on an ice ring. There is a place with pathways that were frozen and you can ice-skate in the forest. As it is the beginning of the season here, the ice wasn’t the best one, but we still had fun. It was Savannah’s first time on skates, and I am very happy to have been here for that. She did so good for a first time and being 2 and half years old!
Kev is not a fan of ice-skating, but I am. I love the feeling of ‘flying on the ice’. The kids had fun. We took a sleigh with us, so we could rest a bit on it when needed. They also had animals around, but I found that some of them had very little space to move, so I am not quite a fan of this part of the experience.
Another fun (and better) experience was the ‘glissades’. This is a place with big slides made of snow and you have a big inflatable thing to sit on and slide down. There are different lengths slides, some with more or less bumps. The one with the bumps are better! There were also other slides with bigger things to sit on, where you have to go all together and it goes a lot faster. It was fun. We were pretty cold by the end of the day though!!!! It was a memorable experience.
Of course, we had Christmas! I almost forgot to talk about it!
We did a big dinner on Christmas eve, like we do in France. Emma was very happy to help with the food preparation and she was very helpful indeed! We played games while the kids watched a lot of Christmas movies (to their great delight!). Christmas morning was opening presents and spending more quality time together. More boardgames and a few more drinks.
It was also our first white Christmas, which is magical. I truly love houses and landscapes covered in snow. I find it peaceful and magical.
We visited Quebec City as well. We visited mainly the centre and it was excellent. The city was decorated for Christmas and it made it even more beautiful to visit.
We had a guided tour of the Citadelle. This fortified military installation was built between 1820 and 1850 to protect the region of attack from the United states. By that date, the United states tried twice to invade without success. To avoid any further attack, the citadelle was built, but was never used as a defensive place, as no other attack were made! It is today the home of the royal 22ieme regiment, a French-Canadian army regiment, who has a goat as a mascot.
There is also a big, like massive, building called The Fairmont Le Château Frontenac. It was finished in 1893. This is a hotel, built by the Canadian Railway Hotel company. It is a landmark in Quebec. It has 610 rooms and suites and multiple restaurants over 18 floors. The building is 79.9 meters high augmented by a 54meters ground elevation. It is an impressive sight which dominated the old Quebec city and the Saint Lawrence river.
In Quebec City, there is a small neighbourhood called the ‘Pettit Chaplain’ with small streets and shops. When we visited it was covered with Christmas decorations and setups where you could take some pictures. It was really pretty. There are lots of shops for souvenirs and yummy delicacies like chocolate, fudges or maple syrup on stick (which we tried of course).
There is a shop which is all about Christmas: there was a queue to enter the shop and inside you can find a whole bunch of decoration related to Christmas. I could have spent a fortune in there!!! But I only bought two small decorations!
We walked in the city for a whole day and really enjoyed it.
The last thing we did that day was a light and music show in the Saint Roch church. It was a very unique experience. The whole church, the ceiling, the pillars, the altar were used to project images while beautiful music was being played. The immersive experience was mesmerizing. This is called the AURA experience and there are one in Paris, Montreal and Quebec city and I think more to come in other cities. If there is one near you, go see it!!!! It is absolutely amazing.
One of the last thing we did in Quebec, was visiting the Omega park. It is a pretty big park full of animals local to Canada, like reindeer, moose, bison, wolf, bear (we saw one), otters (very exciting!!!)… You drive in with your car and it is possible to feed some of the animals some carrots. You can see the animals very close. You can also get out in certain areas and walk around. We really enjoyed this park, as we saw a lot of animals we never saw before and in the middle of the landscape covered with snow, it was very beautiful. It was the perfect way to finish our trip in Canada.
We left Canada on the 4th of January, exactly one year after leaving Australia.
Canada was so wonderful. I enjoyed the snow: yes, it is cold (the coldest night we had was -30 degrees Celsius), but with the right gears, it is very doable. Walking in the forest with everything white around, was for me, a great experience. I truly enjoy this country, and I am hoping to come back, but maybe this time at another time of the year to experience something different.
It was also very nice to be able to catch up with friends and family over there. Canada was a great choice to finish our gap year.
That’s it for this next to last blog. The next blog will be a sum up of our year and then, we will go back to our lives back in Oz.
See you soon for one last blog.
MelRead more