Epic East Coast - Day 48

Quebec is a beautiful city

Today was our Citadel and Crepes day.  We started the day by walking down to La Citadelle de Quebec, which is the star shaped fortress built by the British to protect Quebec from the Americans.  It contains a museum and tours, but it is also home to the Royal 22nd Infantry Regiment and it is the away from Ottawa home of the Governor General.  As it is an active military base, you aren't allowed to just walk around, but you must take a tour.  Oh, and the military has banned Pokemon Go on the base, which is probably a good thing.

We arrived just in time for the changing of the guard, so we sat and watched that, which included the 22nd's mascot, which is a goat.  (As our tour guide said - when the queen gives you a goat for a mascot, you accept it.  And now one of the ranks in the 22nd is Goat Major, who is responsible for taking care of the goat.)  Immediately after the changing of the guard was the first tour, but there were a lot of people waiting for that, so we sat around for half an hour until the next tour started so that there would be less people.

It was a nice tour of the citadel and it even included a chance for us to watch a howitzer fired to mark 12:00 noon.  Our next stop was the museum, which I looked quickly through, as the younger kids were hungry and not very interested in it.

It was then time for lunch, and the moment Alex has waited all trip for - a visit to a creperie.  First, we stopped at McDonald's for the younger kids and after they were done headed to the creperie, which still had a line outside it at 2:00pm.  Alex even ordered his crepes in French, which I missed because I had to take Bradley to the bathroom.  The crepes were quite good and we shared some desert crepes with everyone after we ate, though we left the table quite a mess due to multiple children spilling water during the meal.  Sometimes we're a wrecking ball of a family.

We then headed down to Old Quebec and explored it for the rest of the afternoon, before taking the funicular back up to Chateau Frontenac.  On the way down, we stopped in a park with a bunch of old cannons that the boys played on for quite a long time, pretending to use them to stop invasions of Quebec and getting into a loud argument with some other boys about what weapons would work underwater.

Before leaving, we stopped to watch a street juggler give a performance, which was just OK.  When he got going he was good, but he struggled to get his juggling started, often dropping one of the items, or simply throwing them a single time before stopping for applause.  The kids loved it though.   He was French, but his English accent was part southern drawl, which was pretty amusing.  You don't hear many French say "y'all". We headed back to our suite, ate and then relaxed for the evening.

There is no odd perspective to this photo.  The road is that steep.

And once you are at the bottom, they add cobblestones to the hills.