GOVERNMENT, ART AND CHOCOLATE

This morning we visited the citadel, which also includes the residence of the Governor General of Canada.

Changing of the guard

The Gov. Gen. is slightly more than a figurehead he actually has the job kind of running interference between Parliament and the prime minister.  The governor's job alternates between Anglophones and Francophones.  

One side of the house is part of the original wall or rampart.  

Part of the house is very traditional and looks like  looks like it must've looked in the 1700s.   Other spaces are very modern. Both parts are very appealing. And they wouldn't let us take pictures.

Following that we went to the fine arts Museum of Québec. It is a really nice museum and It also has a  very interesting collection of Inuit art.

I like their modern art collection a lot, especially the artist Jacques? Riopelle.   He had a large piece of art in the governor General's home, that is one of the only pieces that isn't rotated among the various works of art, because the room was designed to have the piece in it.  

After the museum we walked back to the hotel, stopping at a cute cafe on the way and having the Canadian version of a Croquet Madame (ham, cheese, tomato on a baguette.). In Paris it would have been fried in oil or butter, but here it was open face and just on a wonderful, freshly baked baguette.

This is the real town where people live, above

This is how cute the old town is.

 On our walk home we stopped at the museum of chocolate.  They had many things made of chocolate, including a dress.  They also had gelato.  I had a chocolate gelato called Mayan or Mexican and it had hot spice in it.  It was really good.  

QUEBEC AND FRANCE: TWO MORE PEOPLES DIVIDED BY A COMMON LANGUAGE

We had a morning tour of the old town this morning which was very interesting as well as very cold. It was raining and windy a lot of the time as well. Fortunately people on this trip are fairly fast walkers, so we didn't get too wet.  We visited yet another Notre dame --this one is a cathedral as well as a basilica. This church is a copy of saint martins in the fields, but I can't remember the name of it. There's a small cabinet organ in this church that was played (but not owned) by Haydn. 

Typical Quebec construction is stone covered with something else, like wood, to keep the wind from blowing through the soft stone in the winter. What kind of crazy people want to live where it's that cold?

. Our guide had some funny stories.

The best one was this:  the French are basically just as snobby to Quebecers, who speak French, as they are to everybody else, and they kind of make them a laughing stock.  

So about 35 years ago, they said they were going to give Quebec a present.  Something large.  Quebec got all excited, because, you know, they gave America the Statue of Liberty, and they were looking forward to this gift.  It was to the city of Quebec, so it wouldn't be so large, of course.  Finally it was delivered and placed in a position of honor near the river, covered with a black drape until the big unveiling.  When it was finally unveiled, it turned out to be a giant boxy structure that is sort of like a Rubik's cube, but with no colors.  The crowd was stunned.  Finally from the back of the crowd a voice was heard saying: "Open the box."

When our tour was over we had some free time to walk around the old town and part of the new town,  or rather the upper and lower town.  There were a bunch of very interesting shops I can easily spend the whole day tomorrow shopping in if we don't have other things scheduled.  I really wanted these shoes, but they don't come in my size. 

This afternoon we had the opportunity to go to Museum of the civilization of Québec. They have a traveling exhibit there about La Belle Epoch in France.  It was pretty interesting, talked about how the three big things that changed Paris were the automobile, moving pictures, and the Paris exposition.  

Our evening event tonight was a visit to cirque du soleil, which is headquartered here in Quebec.  Because they (Cirque) were grateful to the city for creating space for them when they started out, they do free performances here in the summer.

 These are heavily attended and people get inline an hour early in hopes of getting a seat.  And once you get a seat, it's on a cement bleacher.  After freezing most of the day I bought a polar fleece jacket or I would never have made it through the show.  But the show was exciting and fun.

ORGANS CASTLES AND TRAINS, OH MY

Ay day that involves a train is a win in my book.  And this day was even better.  

We started out with a tour of Notre Dame basilica.  I thought it was a cathedral, but turns out they're a bishop short of a cathedral.  However,  the Pope wanted to give them an atta boy for building such a nice church, so he said it was a basilica.  And no, I don't know which pope.  

The church has nice stained glass, but perhaps the most interesting thing about the windows is that instead of being stories from the Bible, they represent the history of the church in Montreal.  

O

The interesting story we got was that when they wanted to get this church built In the new gothic style, the only architect in the new world who was capable of it was an Irish Protestant from New York.  It's ikind of entertaining, because the church was meant to stand up against the English, who have consistently been a population majority.  

The architect felt this was his best work and wanted to be buried under the church, but since he wasn't a catholic it was a no go.  Eventually he converted to Catholicism so he was buried there.  There's no official crypt under this church, so he's the only one there.  

The inside decorations are taken from the Ste. Chapelle in Paris.  

At the end of our tour we got a special meeting with the organist who gave us a lot of formation abut organs I general and this organ in particular,and then played us a little concert, including, not surprisingly the Bach Tocatta and Fugue in d minor and then a very nice meditation on Amazing Grace.  

Our train ride to Quebec was nice.  They have a lot of freight trains here.  We had to go on the side track three or maybe four times on a trip that's about a hundred miles or so.  

By the time we arrived In Quebec it was quite chilly, more the kind of weather we packed for.  we checked into our hotel and then went out and had a nice group dinner and looked out over the city from the top of the hill.  

This picture or our room looks like its in black and white, but was just kind of low light.  It's a giant room.  Some people in our group aren't happy with their rooms, but ours is fabulous.  

BUS TOUR OF MONTREAL

We had a bus tour of the rest of Montreal today.  I don't know how far we went, but we eventually went up Mount Royal (Mont Real) and had a great look at the city.  But today it was pretty hazy, so we didn't get any decent pictures.  

We visited a bagel shop and saw how they make the bagels, plus got a sample.

Lotsa bagel dough!

 We got some pre cheese cheddar at the farmers market, plus free time to look at all the goodies at the market.  The cheese tasted a little bit like Mozarella and had a sort of squeaky consistency in the mouth.  

Then we had some free time for lunch and a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts and more free time for exploring the plateau, a nice shopping area of Montreal.  

I decided to walk home from there, kind of 

Mushrooms at farmers market

Enough potatoes?

Peppers

Cauliflower 

Our final scripted stop was at the Montreal Fine Arts Museum.  They were having a Chihuly exhibit which was about half of what they had in San Francisco.  

Chihuly at the museum

They arranged for us to take taxis home from the museum, but it was less than two miles so I actually got a chance to walk home, and shop on the way.  Didn't find anything I wanted to buy, if that can be believed.  

Our last included event for the day was dinner at La Pyrenees which is supposed to be a Basque restaurant.  Totally different from what we call a Basque restaurant at home. I had a wonderful fish with an aioli crust, squash soup and a raspberry dessert that was kind of like a tiny trifle and one section of the trifle really reminded me of the dessert out mothers used to make with whipped cream and strawberry Jello.  

Tomorrow we tour Notre Dame cathedral, get a special tour and visit with the organist and supposedly a concert.  Then we leave by train for Quebec City.  

FIRST DAY WITH ROAD SCHOLAR

I hate this name, Road Scholar, but Elderhostel is trying to revamp itself to attract younger customers. I don't mind the concept, learning while traveling, but it just sounds so noisy tooth, like we thought we were Rhodes Scholars.  

John hurt his shin out gardening before we left, and it has become infected.  Looked pretty bad yesterday, but the antibiotic cream, $7 for a tiny tube of the house brand, and band aids $2 for eight strips, seem to have made it look a bit better this morning.  We seem to have these health dramas every time we leave town. I think it's because travel is stressful for John.

This morning we had a history of Canada, covered thoroughly in about 2 hours -- well, not thoroughly, they didn't cover all of Canada forever, just cut it down to Quebec province after about 1800 or so.  Fitting in depth for Road Scholars such as ourselves.  LOL.  

After that we had a walking tour of the old town.  Nothing we hadn't seen, but these statues were explained.  The Anglo man is looking at Notre Dame, the symbol of the French, with his nose in the air. The woman is French, and looking at the stock market, the symbol of England with her nose in the air.  

After the walking tour we had an included lunch, which was a very thin crust pizza, dare I say a California-type pizza.  Like something we'd get at Hot Italian.  Except we each got a whole pizza.  I'm assuming they took us to this place because they serve American-size portions. I thought it was too salty, but then it had olives, feta, and some mushrooms that also were pickled and salty.  Not to say I didn't eat it.

For our free time John wasn't feeling well, so I took the subway and went to the jardins botanique de Montreal where in addition to the lovely regular stuff, they have a mosaic show.  Mosaics are sort of like topiary, in that they are alive and growing, but they aren't planted in the ground.  Instead they are growing out of moss and growing medium which is put in the middle of a form for them to grow on.  So they are also something like a Rose Bowl float, except they have to stay alive for four months.  

I'm just putting in some of the pictures.  

You get the drift. 

Our final event for the day was one of those events tours put together to make you think you've been to a musical performance, but this one was really good. Sax and guitar playing jazz in an art gallery. 

ON OUR OWN

We had a nice, take-it-easy day today.  No Bataan Death March, just a very short relaxing walk to the Marche   Bonsecours , which is a cool bunch of boutiques.  after that we visited the Notre Dame de Bon Secours chapel, which is considered an English church, but Catholic, and a sailors' church.  

the original church on the site was completed in 1777, but destroyed by fire and rebuilt n the 1880s (I think) 

If you enlarge the picture, you can see the boat up overhead.  

After that we visited the museum which was once the chateau Ramezay.  Ramezay was the first governor of Quebec and bought the land and built this house when he was appointed.  It once had land all the way down to the water (about three or four blocks away) but is now nestled on a city street across from the government building.  I didn't take many pictures.   This picture is of a kitchen.  The interesting thing is the big round thing on the right side of the hearth.  

It's a device like a hamster wheel that you could put a dog in, and the dog walking inside the wheel would turn the rotisserie to cook the meat.  Since I've never seen one before, I would assume they weren't very effective,  

By the time we did these things we just went and had a sandwich and some vegetables in the park -- to avoid getting frites again -- then decided we would like to go hear the street musicians at the 18th century fair again.  This was a good choice, because they had a really good hurdy gurdy player as well as a nice ensemble of Von, recorder, harp and mandolin.  The fiddle player also played gamba and had a dancing masters little fiddle.  

Before we went back to meet our Road Scholar group we walked up to the Notre Dame cathedral (not the same as the Notre Dame de Secours) and looked at the outside of the church.  This wall was on the way up there.  

Our new tour guide seems nice, and we met most of the people in our tour tonight.  Looking forward to this new part of the trip.  Tomorrow we get a history lesson, a walking tour of the old town, and free time in the afternoon when  we may go to the botanical gardens.  

MONTREAL ART AND MUSIC

We were on our own today in Montreal. Nobody to tell us what to do or how to do it right.  As a result, we had a pretty long walk for nothing.

But first we had a pretty good time at the 18th century farmers market.  It was really well done.  People were in period costumes and there really wasn't a lot of tourist schlock to buy.  There was a lot of music, more than one group with recorders and at least two hurdy girlies, though I only saw the second one briefly and didn't get his picture.  His appeared to me to be the more interesting instrument.  

We left the market and I wanted to walk down to this place that's supposed to have fabulous glass.  I probably should have read the brochure more carefully, because when we got down there after a long, boring walk, it was closed.  

If I read French correctly, which is a big IF, this sign says they are open Monday through Friday and the last Sunday of every month, I.e. tomorrow, so we had walked a mile and a half for nothing, since today is Saturday, the only day they aren't open.  

We took the more scenic route back, which is a bicycle path, and it was really pretty.  There's a canal that runs between the land and the harbor, and there are a lot of cool-looking decaying buildings out there.  But behind the park, they become scenic ruins, and I never saw a ruin I didn't like.  

The other cool thing on the way back is a place where you can talk into a microphone and here what your voice sounds like reverberating around in the silos across the canal.  

By now it was only 12:30, so we went back to the old town to Mr. Meat's which has a great smoked meat sandwich.  We could have had the local specialty poutain, which is French fries topped with cheese, topped with gravy.  It sounds pretty nasty to me, because I don't like gravy, but John, who does, thinks it sounds nasty, too.  I think we should try it before we leave, but I'm putting it off for Quebec where I think it originated.  

After lunch we decided to go to the quarter Chinoise, which is at least as much Vietnamese as Chinese.  Of course there are a lot of Vietnamese, many of them were raised speaking French before the war.  However, it's a very small area, only about six blocks or so, and nothing very interesting to see.  We did get some bubble tea though.  Then we decided to walk to then place we got off the bus, because i was sure there was a monument there. The monument turned out to be a national theater, but right across the street, we saw these people repelling down the outside of a building.  

From there we walked a few more blocks and could see a movie screen set up as part of a film festival being held here right now.  Tonight is apparently the last night.  We found one of those street pianos, too.  

It's was also a pretty interesting part of town.  

On the way back to the hotel we saw this interesting mural:

By the time we walked home it was about 6:30, and we had to go out and forage for dinner.  We went along the St. Paul's pedestrian mall, and found a cute sidewalk cafe where we had moules and frites (mussels and French fries). The moules weren't all that good, though, kind of small and a bit dry.  

We had two nice after dinner treats: a really enjoyable street guitarist and finding a street with three ice cream shops In a row.  We went to the second.