AU REVOIR QUEBEC CITY

This morning, just after I woke up, or rather John woke me up at 8:30 for no good reason, I heard a lot of cheering outside and looked out the window to see a stream of young people, maybe older teenagers, maybe in their twenties, running down the street in small groups all wearing similar colors and many with cardboard boxes around their middles meant to look like cars.  

I threw my clothes on and rushed out into the street and tried to catch up to them.  I found one group about three blocks away, and as I continued searching, I found other groups of them.  

The groups all seemed to have 8 to 12 members, and all seemed to be accompanied by four or so people in military garb who often gave orders -- like lie down in the street, or shout agreement like a military group.  I asked someone in one of the groups what they were doing, and they said it was an initiation.  Of course, today would have been the first day of school.  

As it turned our, we saw them all around town for the rest of the day.  Sometimes they would stop passers by and ask them to buy candy (we did), once they asked somebody to marry one of them - a particularly charming specimen who had something that looked like spaghetti on his head.  

Our morning wandering took us back to the lower old town, through just a few tourist shops -- depending on whether you want to believe me or John -- a coffee stop for croissants and cappuccino, another visit to the giant mural for special photo ops, and finally dropping in at Paillard to buy ham and butter sandwiches on baguettes to take on the train.  

The person who made me the happiest today was the bellman who arrived our bags down the 30 steps from the lobby to the street.  

 We decided today at the last minute to take the train, rather than the bus, back to Montreal.  

As I was sitting I the train station reading my email, I noticed an email from Citibank about our credit card, but am waiting til we get to Montreal to call about it.  The email looks legit, and I made a bit of a mistake when I was trying to book the train tickets on line this morning, so I'm hoping that's all there is to it .  We've paid ahead for just about everything we have left on this trip, so if there's a problem, it won't be that bad.  

We've arrived in Montreal and are in our very cute hotel room.   It's in a very old building and our room has exposed brick and stone and windows that actually open, a first on this trip.  

Credit card issue was resolved.