Quebec and Parc Omega

The coffee king in Canada is Tim Hortons – it’s everywhere, more than McDonalds which I didn’t think was possible in this world. It’s actually not too bad (I'm stretching myself here) so we tended to stop and get our caffeine fix at Tim’s. One stop on the drive to Quebec provided a funny moment which kept us laughing for a few days. We walked out with our coffee and pastries to the car when an older guy came up to us and the following conversation was had.

Guy – Do you work for the US? (Deb’s reckons he said ‘in’ the US).

Deb – (very slowly) yes….

Guy – Well I wanna share something with you on Kim Jong-un?

(we all looked at each other thinking WTF)

Guy – Don’t you work for the CIA?

Deb – arrh, no, we’re Australians.

Guy – yeah but are you CIA, you got special car rego plates?

(my sister has jumped in the car and locked the doors by this stage)

Me – no, we’re not CIA, we’re tourists.

Guy – you’re what?

Me – we’re on holiday, from Australia, vacation, you know?

Guy – yeah but your plates look CIA?

Me (trying not to laugh) – I don’t think CIA would be advertising themselves but no, we’re only Austalian’s on holiday.

Guy – hmmm, ok well you just look like CIA.

He then walked away to his car and we jumped in our spy car and laughed. My brave sister was disappointed we didn’t ask him what he wanted to tell us about Kim Jong-un.

Now onto Quebec. This is one of the loveliest cities I’ve seen, up there with Prague. It’s a historical city with significant history to Canada. It is one of the oldest European settlements in North America. The ‘old city’ is also the only North American fortified city north of Mexico whose walls still exist. The French founded and established Quebec but the British later conquered it and ruled for a long period. It was interesting to learn how the French were able to convince the British to retain the French culture and language.

The old city has many buildings from the day such as the citadel, the armory, churches and of course, the fortified wall. We took the hop on/off bus tour but it was fairly average. However, we did a 3hr walking tour which was excellent and the guide provided an extensive and interesting history of old Quebec. We enjoyed walking around and exploring the city and survived on our fairly non-existant French speaking skills.

 

The night we arrived in Quebec was a bit late. We unpacked and then went our for a quick feed nearby. When we drive home, the main road was blocked and we could not turn into our street - they were resurfacing the road for a kilometre or so. Our house was about 100m from the turn so it was just there behind about 5 bollards!! We tried to explain to the road worker and ask how we get into there but she said …I don’t speak English (very clearly). We tried again, but got the same response. I guess that was the only English she actually did speak. So we drove around again until we could do a right turn but ended up going in a 4km loop back to the start. We tried another worker who spoke more French. We were frustrated and kept pointing into the area of our house, pointing to our phone with a map and shrugging our shoulders as if to say…how do we get into there if the road is blocked at every right turn? Imagine 3 women trying to talk and tell each other to ssshh at the same time. He kept saying SAN CHAR, SAN CHAR. We gave up and pulled over to look at google maps – we were all trying to work out what SAN CHAR meant. It was like a maze at night trying to find a road to our house from the other side of the suburb. We drove off and found Saint Charles road – so this was SAN CHAR !!!  Left, right, right, left, right, left, left…and on it went and after about 5 minutes of winding around the suburb, we popped onto our street. It took us 10 minutes to get to the take away shop and then 35 minutes to get home again.

After Quebec, we headed to Montreal via a Canadian safari park called Parc Omega recommended by our work friend in Ottawa. This was a a few hours detour for us but it was well worth it. It is just outside the town of Montebello and is a huge natural parkland that you drive your car through to see native Canadian animals in the wild. Although most are enclosed within huge wired areas, they are relatively free in their natural habitats. The deer and pigs roam free and are very comfortable being handfed carrots (that you buy at the park office). It was simply awesome. 

We saw deer, coyotes, black bears, white arctic wolves, buffalo/bison,  and finally a MOOSE. The moose were laying down in the distance but we could see them easily and were amazed how big their antlers were. The deer would stick their head right into the car and were super friendly.

 

 

 

 

How 'bout a kiss?

ahhhhhh