Quebec City, to be precise. I was there this week for work, and I had a bit of time to do some wandering. Because it is now getting rather late, I will put my observations in bullet-point form:
Quebec is cold. I expected it to be slightly colder than New York, but it was much colder, probably in part because of its situation on the St. Lawrence River, which means the touristy Old City gets a lot of wind.
It's expensive, too. I didn't expect that, because while it's a tourist destination, it's a fairly small city without any particularly noteworthy attractions.
Aside from the complaining, it does have an attractive and nice-sized (eminently walkable, but big enough to explore for a few hours) tourist area, with fortified walls, historical signposts, old buildings, public art, a surprising number of ice cream shops for somewhere so cold (I was interested in, but could not bring myself to actually eat, the maple-flavored ice cream), and lots and lots of shopping. I was particularly impressed by one Canadian(?) clothing store called Roots.
I had a "traditional quebecois" meal, consisting of split pea soup, meat pie (I thought this would be a pot pie or a shepherds pie but it was an actual slice of a pie, filled not with fruit but with meat, and it was served with french fries), and maple tart (another pie, filled not with fruit but with an exceptionally sweet and mildly maple-y substance). Fresh fruits and vegetables don't seem to be a big thing there. They do, however, seem to like their dead animals - my other two meals in the city were a fettuccine-with-duck dish and veal ravioli. I am not a big meat eater; most of what was on offer was far more carnivorous than that. I suppose there is not a word in Canuck French for "vegetarian".
The city, in particular its airport and restaurants, seemed very European to me. Aside from the French-speakingness, everything was very leisurely and everyone was very pleasant. Nobody made me take off my shoes or inspected my toiletries in the airport, and nobody tried to take my food away in the middle of a meal (I'm a slow eater, so this happens all the time in New York). It was quite nice for a change, although if I experienced it all the time I would probably find it slovenly.
I suppose it is a bit too obvious that I would find Quebec to be a mash-up of Paris and Anchorage, but I did. Small historic downtown with moose souvenirs everywhere + French-speaking and full of overly fancy meats.
Some photos:
The Promenade. More picturesque than it looks, although if something is picturesque it should probably look presentable in pictures.
Starbucks! Sadly, they were closed in the evening.
Modern downtown through a gap (like those chinks for arrows in medieval castles, but probably for guns) in the fortified wall.
It was cold and dreary. Somehow I thought that looked good in pictures.
Building on top of the wall.
Really awesome mural of the city, populated with historical and modern figures, plus ruins in the foreground.
This man walked into my picture and ruined it. I took another one without him, but it turned out to look much better with the intrusion. I'm sure that has something to do with symmetry, or serendipity, or both.
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