We spent our first hour or so in Quebec in the information center trying to pin down a cheap place to stay. It was a long weekend and every hostel was booked up. Our last two options ended up being a room with two single beds in the YWCA or camping over in Levis a few kms from the ferry which would take us to Quebec. The YWCA won out in the end, partly because it wasn't that tempting to be on the bikes anymore and partly because I was getting tired of camping in the wet weather. Our time at the info center wasn't all bad that though, the young lady at the counter gave us quiet a few little spots to check out which were a little off the tourist paths for food and beer.
Upon arriving at the YWCA we were a little surprised to learn that we had NOT reserved a room for the current night and that, in fact, all of the two person rooms were booked up (it turns out our booking was for the next day). In the end we settled on a room with one single bed since we were getting tired, there were few options and it was getting a little dark. After a failed effort to both sleep on the tiny little bed, I made up my sleeping bag on the floor with my thermarest (Meg took the floor on other nights).
The next day the power was out. We had seen signs which indicated that the power was going to be out, but we assumed we were having some sort of language barrier problem, because honestly, why would you have the place open if the power is out! In the end though it worked out fine, the hot water was still running so we were able to have hot showers by headlamp light (there were no windows in the bathrooms) and went out for the day. Our first order of business was a walking tour of the city in order to get our bearings. It was a really neat tour, and Quebec, the old part especially, is a very walkable city. From there we headed off to catch a tour of the Citadel, it is an interesting site and a still working military base (holding some of the 22nd regiment, the "van doos"). The tour was a little hurried at 1 hour as there are many museums and what not on site that you can only get to through the tour (I guess civilians aren't allowed to wander the military base willy-nilly). After some more walking around we called it a day.
After the first day we spent much of our time seeing the various historical sites and getting a refresher course in Canadian History (it was like Social Studies in grade 10 come to life). There are also many many art galleries in the lower city (I think is what they called it) and there was alot of interesting and very pretty art to be checked out by artists in and around Quebec City. We had mixed results on the food scene but of note were two meals in particular. The first one was our expensive dinner out night; we chose a restaurant suggested by the Lonely Planet. We both chose to eat off the fixed menu and the food ended up being pretty good, but the thing that was amazing was the size of the proportions. I ordered a "Quebec Sample Platter" (or something to that effect) expecting to get 5 small samples of the main dishes, instead I got 5 basically full meals. And then at dessert, I ordered a maple syrup pie, and got a 1/4 of a pie! (The pie was really good). Meg's dessert was kind of funny too, it was white bread, with cream poured over top and then huge chunks of maple sugar, it was also good, but we both left feeling a little sickly full. Fortunately we walked about an hour to get back to the room for the night so we felt better.
The second meal of note was our poutine and beer sampling night. The young lady at the tourist information center had suggested a few places to go for poutine as well as a few local brew pubs so we spent the night touring around them. I think in the end we ended up having four poutines in a 24 hour period. Something else that we learned on that expedition is that in Quebec you can serve alcohol without food, so we were getting pretty hungry and a little tipsy after our first few stops which were all at breweries. After a really sunny day spent cycling around the outer edge of the city and eating a "home" cooked meal from ingredients bought at the farmers market, we hopped on the bus and said goodbye to Quebec.
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