THE TRAIN TO CHARLEVOIX

What a fun day we had today.  The only bad part was that we had to be up and put of our hotel room by 8:20 so we could get on the train for Charlevoix .

The train is a private train, the rights to the track bought by the owner of Cirque du Soliei.  This is just a tourist train, but it's really nice.  The train celebrates its second birthday in a week, and everything is still new and nice.  On a side note, the waitress told us that last year the train ran 10 months, this year only from  June to October. Our tour guide Andree told us that they don't get enough customers in the winter to pay the $100,000 it costs to clear the tracks for one trip.  

The train goes along the St.  Lawrence river to the Charlevoix region which ends at baie de malo.  

The train starts about 10 miles out of Quebec at a scenic place with a waterfall and a cable aerial tram that goes up to the top of the waterfall.

 Once you get on the train, they start giving you food.  It began with an assortment of bread, bran muffins, croissants, and chocolate bread.  And of course orange juice and coffee.  From there, they goon to a little frittata, yogurt with berries and crunchies, cooked tomato, and bread pudding.  Then they come and agai with the fancy bread tray and more coffee.

On every table is an ipad which is pre loaded with interesting videos abut all the places we are passing and accessed by an interactive map.  About the time we finally finished all the food we came to the little artisan town called Baie St. Paul.   The train stops there for about 2 hours, you can walk into town and visit all the little shops and art galleries.  They were cute, but didn't find anything I really had to bring home.  I did buy a gourmet chocolate bar (having been so deprived of food) but we ate that long before we headed back to the train.  

The first half of the,trip was pretty, the second half even better.  You can see New Brunswick across the water, but it's a long ways away.  And we saw Beluga whales in the water.  They were out of camera range, however.  

Then we arrived at La Malbaie and were taken to our hotel, the Fairmont Manor Richelieu, which is every bit as elegant as it sounds.  In fact I didn't mention it before, but our hotel in Quebec, another Fairmont, is also quite elegant.  

We arrived here at about 4:30 which barely gave us time to go to the scenic outdoor bar and have a drink before we went to a very cute restaurant in the village to have dinner.  I think they aren't really going to let us go home after the trip, but are going to sell us for foie gras, which means we'll never see California again.  

I'm writing this blog tonight in the hotel, but for all the luxury, they want $14 for Internet, so I won't get to upload until I get on the train tomorrow.  

Tomorrow is also the end of the Road Scholar part of our trip.  We take the dinner train back to Quebec, stay at the Manoir Victoria overnight and then most people leave for home.  We are staying another night in Quebec, then going back to Montreal for three days.