After being in Montréal for a couple of days, I continued heading east towards Québec City. I took another Pop-A-Ride to the edge of Québec City and then took a bus to the city itself. The route took me past the Parliament Building which was beautifully lit up. I thoroughly enjoy looking at the city lit up at night. I always have. The bus ride through Québec City was gorgeous.
I arrived at the hostel which is in the old part of the city, around the corner from an Irish Pub. For the first time since I’d arrived in Canada, I decided to take myself out for dinner. It was something I had done a lot whilst I was on holiday in America and Australia in early 2023 and really enjoyed doing. It’s something that is still relatively new to me and occasionally I still feel apprehensive about it but I always end up enjoying it. I really liked the Irish Bar (and it was conveniently only about 30 metres from the hostel) and was pleasantly surprised to find out they had live music playing every night. (I ended up going to this bar every night I was in Québec with the other girls staying in my dorm room.)
I met a really nice girl, Saskia, in my room from Germany and we explored Québec together. It was really nice to explore the city with someone else as it got me to do somethings that I wouldn’t necessarily have done had I been on my own. On my first full day in Québec, we walked to the Parliament Building. It is a truly beautiful building from the outside, some amazing architecture. Usually I wouldn’t have gone inside but Saskia wanted to and I’m really glad we did. The building is this amazing juxtaposition of old and new. The outer rooms of the building are all quite modern, whilst the inner sections and the hotel all scream old fashioned. The Parliament Room itself is incredibly impressive. I can absolutely see how it became the seat of Québecois Parliament.
After the Parliament Building, we walked to the Hotel Fairmont – Château du Frontenac. Again, this is a splendid old building in the heart of Old Québec and, as the name suggests, it closely resembles a castle. However, on this occasion, the architecture wasn’t the main draw for me. No. We had found that there was a toboggan run right outside the hotel. It only cost $4 for a run down the slope on an old wooden sled which would take up to four people. My friend and I went on one together and wow was it a rush. We googled it afterwards and apparently you can reach up to 70kmph! I’m not sure if we hit that speed but we were definitely going down at a hell of a pace! It was ridiculously good fun. 10/10 would recommend.
We finished off our day by visiting the Notre-Dame de Québec Basilica – Cathedral. Again, this is an unbelievably amazing building and full of history. There was a really interesting exhibit on Saint François de Laval who was the first Bishop of the Cathedral. I’m not a religious person but I could appreciate what a remarkable place it was, even if the amount of gold décor was a bit much for my personal taste.
The next day we decided to explore more of the nature around Québec City so took a bus to Montmorency Falls. The waterfall is utterly breath-taking. It was half frozen over when I was there but still pretty magical. The sound of the water pouring over the precipice was thunderous. I was amazed by the ice formations present in the falls themselves. But more than that, the view from the top of the falls was spectacular. I could see down into the lake the falls ran into, then further to the river and all the way across to the opposite bank. It’s a really special place to experience.
One thing I should mention about Québec is that it was COLD. Even colder than Montréal. With the windchill, the temperature felt like -20⁰C even though it was only about -12⁰C. When you were walking along, the wind felt like you literally had an ice bucket on your face. I had initially planned to leave Québec on my third full day there but the weather forecast changed my mind. We were due a pretty big snowstorm (by my British standards, I was quickly corrected by a Canadian that it was actually pretty small) the day I had been planning to travel so I decided to stay in Québec for an extra day and travel once the storm had blown through. I’m really glad I made that decision. Approximately 2ft of snow fell overnight. The pavements which had been easily walkable for the last 2 days were suddenly covered in snow that went half way up my shins, even after it had been partially cleared! The snow completely transformed the city. I loved it.
The snow made it pretty difficult to do anything that day so I spent the day doing admin and planning where I wanted to go next. I had signed up for a website called Workaway and received an email from a Dutch couple living in British Columbia, asking if I would be available to dog/house sit for them for two weeks at the start of February. I was initially a little apprehensive about the offer as they didn’t have any previous reviews from other Workawayers but we had a video call and I immediately knew that it was something I wanted to do. That evening, Saskia and I were invited out for a drink with an American guy called Aaron for his birthday. Weirdly, I had met Aaron on New Year’s Eve in Toronto, and Saskia had met him a few days prior in Montréal. It really is a small world sometimes. Saskia and I bought Aaron a cupcake as a birthday cake and met him at our (my) favourite Irish Bar. We were also joined by another girl in our dorm room called Nina. It was a really lovely way to spend my last night in Québec before I started heading back west.
I had agreed that I would arrive in B.C. by 24th January at the latest to begin my Workaway. This gave me around 2 weeks to travel from the east coast of Canada back to the west coast where I had begun my journey. I was super excited to head back west and immediately started planning my route, starting with a stop back in Montréal to fulfil that need to revisit the city.
Ro Wells Travel 
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