June 30 - Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Chez Gaston and Vieux Quebec (Old Quebec)

Our hotel, the Chateau Frontenac, is located at a commanding position on cliffs overlooking the St. Lawrence Seaway in Quebec City's historic Old Town or Vieux Quebec which constitutes the part of the city that is contained by the old city walls.  Although touristy, Old Town is undoubtedly charming and feels very European.  That's what everyone says about Quebec City and it's true - everything that we love about France without the jet lag.  

After grabbing another amazing coffee from Cantook, we visited the newly remodeled and recently reopened Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.  I had expected it to be busier on the afternoon starting a long weekend but, it felt like we had the place to ourselves.  In fact, there’s very little foot traffic or car traffic anywhere we go!  I’m not sure where everyone is.  Probably Europe.

Charlotte had a longer runway for art than the other 2 so I took them to the playground while we waited.  I love watching my kids interact with other kids when they don’t share a common language. Jacqui disengages almost immediately but Natalie, being younger and less self-conscious, tries harder to negotiate a way to play together.  There are a lot of kids here who are not bilingual so Natalie is getting lots of practice at charades!

After the art, we took a recommendation from a NYT article that Jack had read and drove over to Chez Gaston for our second poutine of the trip.  The author of the article must have been drunk because this poutine would have been awesome if we were drunk.  Alas, we were not so we sampled the house special (Fries, cheese curds, gravy, ground beef and sliced up hot dog) and the traditional poutine and called it a day!  Kids are still not on board with the poutine so we have our work cut out for us.  They like cheese curds and fries so we are 2/3 of the way there.  

After a refreshing dip in the hotel pool and a somewhat scandalous walk back to our room, we got cleaned up and wandered out into old town to take in the atmosphere and get some dinner.  After a perfunctory pub dinner, we stopped and got some maple syrup taffy – a local delicacy that we’ve tried to emulate in Tahoe numerous times but always failed miserably.  This was perfect!  We scampered along the city wall to take in the sunset and walk off all that sugar.   Old Quebec is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it's not hard to understand why.  Bon nuit.