Quebec City celebrates 400

This weekend we hit the road for Quebec City to help celebrate her 400th birthday. We arrived around noon hour and after a quick bite to eat we headed out to explore Chute-Montmorency (aka Montmorency Falls).



What a sight! The falls are 272 feet high and 98.5 feet higher than the Niagara Falls. By the time the water cascades over the edge and on the rocks below it is nothing but a fine mist floating on the breeze (soaking my camera lens).

We managed to find a free parking spot up above the falls and from there we walked across the suspension bridge and then down down down the 487 stairs to the bottom. Only myself and one other daring soul in the group headed out to the closest point to the falls for the ceremonial soaking. Luckily it wasn't winter time when the mist from the falls actually freezes to form a 100ft ice cone for climbing and tobogganing. We'll have to come back to check that out.



The next day we drove towards Old Quebec finding an awesome parking spot at the Plains of Abraham. From here we spent the rest of the day hiking the Plains and then down and around La Citadelle to the Chateau Frontenac and finally down even further to Lower Town Old Quebec.






Chateau Frontenac

Just east of the Funicular we found another set of stairs leading down to the famous Lower Town of Old Quebec. After snapping the prerequisite Chateau Frontenac photos we headed through Porte Prescott to the top of Breakneck Stairs and Rue Du Petit Champlain. This is the area famous for its Parisian like atmosphere and having spent some time walking the back streets of Paris I would have to agree. The two main differences being the scale (can you guess which one is larger?) and the dress of those strolling the streets (can you guess which is more fashionable?). Quebec scores points for the lack of dog doo that tends to litter the Paris sidewalks in the late hours of the day before the morning street cleaners attack.


Recreating a photo from our Eyewitness Travel Guide.
Quebec is easily one of Canada's top ten most beautiful cities and there is definitely more to see and do here than we were able to fit into our 3 day trip - heck we didn't even get out to see the whales. Guaranteed we'll be back...


Cheers from the top of Breakneck Stairs.