out with a splash

There is a festival in Quebec City right now. I cannot remember being here when there wasn't a festival. Lobster festival, ice sculpture festival, and this time there is something combining music and beer. But, as we descend down to the old port section of the city late Saturday night, we ignore it all. Food -- we're very much in need of food. Somewhere along the way the should have had a breakfast and a lunch, but here it is, almost 9 in the evening and we've had neither. Long bus rides can be very disruptive to your eating habits. No matter, we find a place now that serves moules frites, in any one of twelve different ways. You could not make Ed happier. Nor am I complaining. Mine, in a Provencal broth -- mmmmm.

The walk back up to the inn is summer warm. The streets of Quebec are filled with strollers.





So satisfied and satiated am I after dinner that I again doze off before posting. I wake up at 3 and finish the half written paragraph. Travel can really wreck your writing habits too.


In the morning we wake up to rain. Not just your pitter patter kind of shower -- real rain, big splotches of wetness streaming from thickly gray skies. We have only this one day in the city and though neither of us feels compelled to sight see (I used to come to this place often enough in my young adult days and even though I'm an old adult now, I can't say that it has changed significantly), still, I feel we ought to move some. When you've been hiking, it's hard to just stop and recline.

We borrow umbrellas and head out. Upper city, then lower city. And oh does it rain! The vendors are having a slow day.





The streets have few hardy souls, but not many.





The St Lawrence looked sadly gray, so unlike the radiant blues we'd gotten used to.





The boardwalk -- slick and so bare, considering it's Sunday.





In the lower part of the old town it's like that as well. A few determined souls, holding tight to their umbrellas.





Still, I keep thinking how easy this walk is. The luxury of the umbrella, of a place to dry off -- indeed, thousands of places to dry off, the smooth walkway, all of it. So it's raining. Big deal. Makes the roofs all shiny and bright.





And the window displays are unaffected. Here's pleasure, on a plate.





We had wanted to eat a big lunch as it would also be our dinner for the day. We have a bunch of evening flights and then a night drive home from Milwaukee. Best to fill now. There is a sweet little place that serves savory buckwheat crepes. That was the goal. But we come to be distracted by the market. Yes, I know, it's not Saturday, not market day, nor am I in need of vegetables, but this is a huge covered market of local products and if you aren't, say, into the berries...





...you may admire the syrups and honeys and all the other foods from the province. And there are tables off to the side where you can eat some prepared sandwiches, or you can put together your own meal from market foods. Ed and I do just that.

Gravlox from the fish vendors.





Tomatoes, a baguette, then, a return to the fish vendor because we see someone eating cupfuls of the delicious little shrimp that are so abundant here. We want those as well.





A shame to pass on these... (I remember how in France this June I asked if the lobster on the menu was local. Oh no, the waiter said. Too expensive. We get ours from Canada.)






But we do add a delicious pint of strawberries (they are in the thick of the strawberry season here right now), and also, I cannot neglect our very first purchase -- the superb wild blueberries, that remind me of my summers in my grandparents' village home in Poland.





We eat very very well.


And now we're bumping along the cloud saturated skies over Canada, heading home, happy as anything with our Gaspesie week and happy, too, to be almost home.