Niagara to Quebec

From Philadelphia we headed north into New York State. We met our friends Blair and Cheryl for dinner at Niagara Falls and even though it was a very brief visit, it was great to see them. They came across from Canada and hadn't seen the falls from this side. They are still impressive but to be honest, the view from the Canadian side is much more spectacular

From Niagara we headed across the top of New York state and crossed over into Quebec. It was a small back road and I think we interrupted the border guard’s morning tea and had no problem getting into Canada. All road signs were now in French and the majority of local people don’t speak English. Our campground was 30kms down the road and with a combination of my very bad French, their bad/non existent English and lots of sign language, we made ourselves understood. This was to be the way of things for the next week. The small grocery store in the tiny hamlet was an eye opener though. Some triple cream brie, herby goats cheese, a couple of bottles of red wine to accompany the charcoal grilled rib eye steak and some tawny port by Offley (Mark’s favourite label and one that we’ve not seen much of outside Portugal) and we were set for a very nice evening! We even set up the screen on the side of Badger and watched a movie outside for the first time this summer (it’s been way too hot down south for this). We bypassed Montreal as we visited it two years ago, and followed the waterway to a small village of Nicolet.  For those of you who remember the 1980’s BBC TV series Hi-de-hi! (based on a fictional holiday camp), I definitely had one of those moments. At 7.15pm, three notes rang out across the campground, a voice came over the tannoy then people from all over descended on the petanque area in front of our site. They all had their boules bags and magnetic pickup sticks and a number of games were played, all at very high volume!

We carried on north east along the river to Levis which is across the river from Quebec City. Each day we caught the ferry across and explored the city.

The old town with cobbled streets and a citadel were all very quaint.

Parliament building and fountain

Joan of Arc statue and gardens 

Notre Dame Cathedral 

On the Saturday night, they put on a firework display which was the best we had seen in years. Even though it was pouring with rain, we sat out in our plastic ponchos (souvenirs from a previous open top bus tour) and watched the display and listened to the music that played along in sync.

After a lovely city break we continued on route 132 along the St Lawrence River and through lots of small villages. The river widened out so much that we couldn’t see the other side and the views were spectacular

We continued around the Gaspe Peninsula as the St Lawrence River became the Gulf of St Lawrence, then travelled west along the coast. Route 132 is the longest road in Quebec at 1,002 miles (approx 1,600 kms) and we toured most of it. 

We are now in New Brunswick and will be touring this province, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia over the next two weeks before crossing back into the US for the Labor Day bank holiday weekend.