On getting to Quebec City and what was done there

I was correct about the B and B having been built in the time of Nouvelle-France. The building dated from approximately 1660. Breakfast involved a dish apparently called a Dutch baby akin to a large Yorkshire pudding with huloumi cheese and strawberries.

LeLoup, the owners’ Bernese mountain dog, looked on through a glass door. Désirée and Dominique spent a certain amount of time with him, even taking him for walk. This was good as Désirée has expressed a desire for a dog of that breed. Her parents had been having trouble explaining to her the concept that the breed was too much dog. The friendly but insufficiently trained LeLoup helped illustrate the issue to my niece.

We set off on a side road down by the river then climbed slightly to a road which had been the Main Street of Neuville before the advent of Highway 138. There we paused to admire a church which had become the local library. Unfortunately, some of us had longer to admire it and mural than we might of wished as Pappy had a flat tire, cause undetermined.

It being a sunny Saturday, there were a great many spandex cyclists on “whee” bikes out of Quebec City. It amazed Dominique to see some of them stop at a dep to buy a Coke and a Jos Louis. I wasn’t brave enough to tell her that I sometimes did the same.

There had been the idea that the modus operandi of the day would be to go from farm stand to local bakery in order the stretch the day out. There were two flaws in this plan. The first was that so near to a city, such stands grow fewer in number. The next was that the Route Verte/Chemin du Roi left highway 138 relatively early placing us on a nice back road which definitely didn’t have enough traffic to support road side stands.

We stopped at small to walk down to the River, then we were faced with a steep climb which everyone walked up.

We rode through some neighbourhoods populated by people with more money than architectural taste. One house was an exercise in fairytale medieval turrets and towers.

We arrived at Cap-Rouge where we found lunch in the form of a basic casse-croute, the better sit-down restaurant next door being too much trouble for the APU, i.e. he would have to wait in a mask for a minute to be seated. This brought me into conflict with his Nibs and an uptight woman who thought I was too close to her as I tried to park my bike. We were under a high iron railway trestle which Désirée thought ugly but which struck others as soaring.

After lunch, we had a long hill to face. Dominique and your correspondent made it up without pushing. We rode on until the Plains of Abraham and the Musée des Beaux Arts (as opposed to the Musée des Laids Arts) where we hung a left and soon found our air B and B.

It is a trifle eccentric, with two floors, street level and below with both bathrooms on the lower level. We settled in, showered and waited for Fil to arrive with the car and sundry items including food, notably supper.

This morning Dominique and I went to a nearby laundromat cum bubble tea joint in order to do our laundry. The bubble tea part of the operation didn’t open until noon. Afterwards, I cleaned Leonardo’s chain.

I then set off to my cousin Marianne’s house. Luckily, she was there and very willing to play hostess to a cousin arriving out of the blue. We chatted, me in her pool. Her sons,Liam and Nathan, arrived back from having taken the new puppy for a walk. “Toffee” is the pup’s name, chosen as an amalgam of “tough” and “happy” and as a reference to the light brown in his white and brown coat. They have had him for two weeks. It was fun to see a Brittany Spaniel again (Granny and Gandpa having had them). It was also a little sobering though as the last (and indeed only) Brittany Spaniel puppy I remember was Meg. She was born the same summer as my sister! Toffee is still a young puppy learning and playing. He was chosen for his boldness and sociability from his litter mates.

Afterwards, I visited the Plains of Abraham Museum which covered not only the Battle and related topics but also the history of the Abraham Battlefield Park. I was surprised to learn how recent (1908) the decision to make the park was and just how long it took to finish it (something like fifty years). Among the buildings demolished to make way for the park was Canada’s first observatory and the Ross armaments factory. The latter was an obvious thing to remove given the infamous reputation of the Ross rifle.

I proceeded to the Old Upper Town. I was thinking about lunch and was consulting my guidebook as to where it began to pour. Nuts to the guidebook, let’s go indoors. Thankfully, it proved decent enough. It had a large screen TV tuned to the CBC which was broadcasting King Lear. The sound was off but there were subtitles in English. After lunch, the rain subsided long enough to lure me down the the Quebec naval museum which was closed on account of Covid-19. In the process, I discovered my rear brake wasn’t up to scratch. I tried adjusting it with little success. A Google search of open bike shops led me on a wild goose chase to the Lower City and away from where I should have gone at the word “go”, viz MEC. Unfortunately, the latter is no longer where it was the last time I was in Quebec City, very close to where I was, and instead is now well removed from downtown. I set off in the thickening rain before noticing that it was getting a bit late for a visit to MEC on a Sunday afternoon. So tomorrow, I will go there after the Frida Kahlo exposition.

When I got back to the air B and B and drying off, Mummy informed me that Désirée had visited a number of book stores and that at one used bookstore, she had been so frustrated at the lack of organization in the children’s section that she had reorganized it herself. The owner gave her a book in gratitude. She’s got librarian in her genes. ;-)