North America 2022 : Thursday September 15 Day 17 West to Montreal

Our third day in Quebec City was originally intended to be spent on the Morrin Centre tour, but, as noted in the previous couple of blog entries, that wasn’t possible as the tours didn’t (re)start until Friday September 16. So we decided to do something a bit different and went for a walk. This time around the outer, and lower, parts of the old town. We ran into the crowds streaming off a German cruise liner that was docked on the river. They must have spread out all over the city, or maybe half the ship hadn’t decided to get up as yet, as it didn’t seem that crowded where we were. Not as bad as our day in Tallinn in 2017 when the whole city was completely swamped with cruise ship tour groups filling up the street and not buying anything. On that occasion we just found ourselves a nice restaurant with tables on the street, bought ourselves something light to eat with a few drinks and just sat and watched the world go by. This time we were able to mingle without much difficulty.

Remembering our long haul up to the top of the Old Town a few days earlier we decided on taking the funicular to save our legs. At $4 each for about 30 seconds of ride time it was worth it.

And then it was just a matter of killing time until the mid-afternoon train from Quebec City to Montreal. It was the usual stuff: wandering the streets and looking into shops. We grabbed a spot of lunch and wandered back to the hotel to pick up our bags.

The stroll down to the railway station was short – only about 500 metres – and flat. The Canadian Railway company had this rule that no bag could be over 23kg, which didn’t make a lot of sense to us. It wasn’t as if the train would worry about an extra kilo or two, and, as there was to be no baggage service, we had to move our bags ourselves. In any event we shuffled some wine bottles around and evened everything out.

The trip was completely uneventful and we arrived some 20 minutes early. The arrangement was that we would be staying with our friends Henry Balen and Renee Sieber for the three days we would be in Montreal, and Henry had offered to come pick us up. All of that was achieved and we later settled in for a meal of baked red snapper and lots of wine.

Thank you presents were given, and discussions were had, all of which are now forgotten. It was good night.