Exploring the Charming Quebec, Canada

This morning we arrived to the absolutely charming and beautiful city of Quebec, which is the capital of the Quebec province of Canada. It is a city surrounded by water on three sides, and has a fortified wall which had protected the city from invaders. Currently, there are about 500,000 inhabitants of the city with about 1 million within the metropolitan area.

The scene from the river is dominated by the Fairmont Frontenac castle-like hotel perched on the top of the city.

The official language of the province of Quebec is French, and by looking at this charming city center, you truly do feel you have been transported to a small village in France.

Each year the city invites a guest artist to present works of art around the city. We didn’t get the name of this year’s artist, but his work was not hard to miss.

We have been here several times, and today we decided to join a walking tour of the inner city from an Art Historian by the name of David Mendel.

We toured the city center and observed the various types of construction over the years with fire danger being the predominant concern over the centuries. Roofs varied from slate to tile to wood all of which presented their own fire dangers. We further observed the very steep roofs were designed that way so the abundant snow would slide off, but we also noticed there was always a barrier at the edge of the roofs to prevent the show/ice from falling on a pedestrian … we’re not quite sure how the snow is released from behind these barriers!

It is a steep walk from the lower city to the upper part, so we took a funicular to the top and enjoyed the incredible vistas on this sunny but windy and cool fall day.

We toured the Ursuline Chapel …

… and the Seminary of Quebec now Laval Architectural School and the fabulous Notre-Dame Basilica with its fantastic gold leaf altar pieces.

This afternoon at 3pm, three Resident couples from Montreal hosted an outing to a performing art center for a Magic Show by about a dozen different magicians. It was phenomenal and we went from amazement to laughter and back to amazement for several hours. Some of the acts were quirky and some truly incredible and overall, it was a wonderful show, like this goofy guy.

He is suspending 9 large ping pong balls supposedly using hair dryers attached to his body. It looks impressive, but you’ll notice the two lower balls are defying gravity by being suspended at an angle from his body. OK, maybe too much analysis!!!

There were several children in the audience shrieking with some of the slap-stick humor which made the audience even more hysterical.

Afterwards, we had cocktails and canapes while mingling with fellow Residents and the magicians.

A really fun afternoon!