La Citadelle de Québec and Le Vieux Port

Sonya’s Blog - Day 69 - August 30th - La Citadelle and Le Vieux Port

Today we are finally going to La Citadelle, Blake is so excited. We were not in too much of a hurry, as we really only intend to do the one thing.

The Citadel is on Cap Diamant (Cape Diamond) in Québec City, on the highest point. The hill is called Cap Diamant because when Champlain landed here, he thought there were diamonds in the hill. It turned out to be quartz and lead ot the saying “That’s as false as a Canadian Diamond”. Which is funny, because Canada now produces some of the most beautiful diamonds from the Arctic mines and there is nothing false about them.

This fortress is an active garrison of the Royal 22e Régiment (you have to, by Federal law, say it in French because this is the sole French-language regular force infantry regiment) and was nicknamed "The Gibraltar of America", I believe by Dickens. Due to this, you cannot tour around by yourself, you must take a tour. There were two tours, one of the Governor Generals Residence and one of the whole Citadelle. We chose to just do the Citadelle Tour since we had toured Rideau Hall in Ottawa. It was an hour tour and it was really good. The oldest military building was in the Citadelle, built by the french in 1642 (or somewhere around that time). They also have the highest point in Québec City, and this is where the largest cannon is that can shoot 5 KM.

It was put in this spot because the British figured that any attack from the Americans would come from the Great Lakes, however it swiveled 360 degrees, in case they were wrong. The last time it was used was in the 1990’s sometime, but not because they were under attack. The soldiers decided to try it out and shot a cannon ball out towards the St. Laurent. It was winter at the time and the ice on the St. Laurent was the thickest it had been in a long time and as a result the cannonball bounced on the ice and ended up in someone’s house on the other side of the river, I assume around 4 to 5 KM up river. Luckily, nobody was injured or killed, but it did significant damage to the house. The soldiers had to go out the next day and rebuild the house and they haven’t used the cannon since then. We got some good pictures of La Citadelle that you can see throughout my post here. La Citadelle is a star shape, for maximum defense. I could not get a picture of that, but I did take a picture of a post card which had La Citadelle from the air. Pretty cool.

Natasha wanted to walk down to Le Vieux Port because there was a market there and she wanted to check it out. It was a KM away, all downhill, which meant uphill back to the truck. We moseyed down there, after stopping for some lunch at a traditional French Cafe on that same cobblestone street. The kids have been good about practicing their french and the waitresses have been good about speaking in french and letting the kids practice. Natasha orders for me and herself, which is very handy for me and much better for the waitress as Natasha speaks french very well. The market ended up being a Farmer’s Market, and it was excellent. There were a bunch of local growers there and you could get a huge basket of blueberries or Strawberries for $8 and lots of veggies for very good prices. Unfortunately, we had not room in our fridge and we are driving tomorrow so we couldn’t buy anything. We had a good look around and then started the hike back up the hill towards the truck.

We took a different way and found some more unique streets We just love Old Québec, always something new to find and lots of nooks and crannies to discover. We could spend days exploring all the streets and getting a good workout to boot. Our time is up though and we are moving on tomorrow.

We got back to camp and Natasha was so excited because the bouncy pillow was empty. She and Isaac hopped out at the front entrance so they could go bounce and Blake and I headed back to the RV to get Kizmet. Blake grabbed his swim trunks and we headed towards the front so that Kizmet could have a good walk. It is quite a long campground and we are near the back, so it is a little bit of a hike to get to the front gates where all the activities are. Kizmet was excited to be out and about. The campground is almost empty now so I let her run around and be a goof nut while we were waiting for Blake to get his trunks on. When we got to the front entrance Natasha was doing flips and whatnot and Isaac was running around the bouncy pillow (Natasha told him to, it was part of his conditioning - I suspect it was to keep him off the pillow so that she could have it all to herself:). Blake headed to the pool, the kids goofed around on the bouncy pillow and I walked back to the RV with Kizmet so that I could feed her.

The kids showed up about 45 minutes later and grabbed their swim stuff and went back to the pool. I tested out posting blogs and getting pictures on and it seems to be working pretty good now so hopefully we have no more problems. I posted some of my blogs, now that the campground has cleared out the wifi works fantastic.

We had a light supper and then a fire and had a nice time enjoying the beautiful Québec evening. We will miss Québec, we could easily have spent the whole summer exploring the province. I think it has been really good for the kids as well to hear so much french and to have to speak it in everyday conversation.

We move onto New Brunswick tomorrow, it will be a longer drive, almost 6 hours. I would like to be out no later than 9, we will see how it goes.

Sonya