A Morning in Quebec City

Spending a Morning in Quebec City | Plains of Abraham | Old Town | July 2024

Today was a special day — not just because we were finally visiting a city we’d wanted to see for years, but because it was Charlotte’s 10th birthday! Since going through all her health issues last year, and also watching her get older, every day with her feels so precious, and we were so happy to be celebrating this milestone birthday today. I would say we planned a special day filled with some of her favorite things — such as being together, eating treats, spending time outside, and sniffing around a new area — but let’s be honest, we plan every day around her and what she likes, so it wasn’t too much different than any other day!

After a night of little sleep thanks to the music festival going on, we rose early and drove into the heart of the city. We found free parking for a couple hours near the Plains of Abraham, and started our morning walk here. It was pretty foggy so we didn’t really have views of the opposite side of the river from here, or get an appreciation for how tall this hill was, but we still enjoyed our walk through the area. Thankfully the festival didn’t start up again until the evening, so we didn’t have to deal with crowds or traffic from that. However, we did see a lot of trash littered around, and some other disgusting things that tend to happen around events like this. We tried to not let all this affect our overall impression of the city though. Besides the trash, the only way the festival really impacted our time here is because a lot of roads were closed even to walking, so we ended up having to change our walking route a few times.

After walking through the lawn and gardens of the Plains of Abraham, we made our way towards the old town of the city. We had to get passed some modern buildings, government buildings, and more festival vendors, but when we made it to the cross streets of Rue D’Auteuil and Rue Saint-Louis, we finally found the beautiful European style architecture we had been hoping to see. At that point, we couldn’t get enough of the sights, and I couldn’t help but take pictures of everything we passed by.

We walked all the way to the end of Rue Saint-Louis, where we came to several different monuments and a beautiful overlook of more of Quebec City and of the Saint Lawrence, including Ile d’Orleans where we had spent the night. Here we also saw the grand Chateau Frontenac, a very large hotel which boasts the claim of being the ‘most photographed hotel in the world.’ Naturally, I couldn’t resist. We sat down on a bench here for a bit to rest, then started to look for somewhere to grab breakfast to go. We took another side street back towards the beginning of the old town where Curtis grabbed a pastry, breakfast sandwich, and smoothie for us all to share.

At that point, the day was starting to heat up and the city was starting to wake up, so we made our way back to the van and said our goodbyes for now. Up until this point, Curtis had been pointing out all the parts he liked about the city and our short experience walking around here, even declaring it his favorite city he’s been to, but the long drive through suburbs and then getting on the busy freeway may have made him waver in that idea. Still, we had a very enjoyable, short and sweet time here. We saw what we wanted to see, maybe we’ll return someday, but if not at least we have some great memories of spending Charlotte’s 10th birthday somewhere special — and she even walked the whole 3 miles! Not bad for a 10 year old puppy!