Work, work, work… It’s fun when it’s done in a beautiful city like Quebec. We really are so impressed by how beautiful it is here. Everywhere we looked today was a feast for the eyes and senses, as you can feel the history at every turn.
Video to come!
Morning
This blog post actually started way earlier, at about 2am, because that’s when Ethan woke up with a bleeding nose. He was fine and went back to bed shortly after.
When Ethan woke up again, he started the day with Harry Potter. He’s now on the fifth book and can’t get enough of Harry Potter.
Breakfast is simpler these days without the fridge, so it was a warm and delicious oatmeal with apples. Ethan’s learning to just eat what we have because he realizes that what we’re serving is all that there is!
After breakfast, we spent time at the library catching up on work. With the videos I make, there are often revisions, so this morning was spent at the library we went to when we first arrived in QC.
Ethan worked on a new French video, as he’s now inspired to create more videos with the help of Google Translate. He was asking me about what certain words are in French. I don’t know too many, but Google does! It was nice to see Ethan being self-reliant and motivated to use a new tool to accomplish a task.
And this is the video he made…
Afternoon
As we worked in the library, Dong Eun was preparing lunch. She often thinks there’s nothing to make but then comes up with something new and creative. Today, it was couscous with macaroni, potatoes, onions and mushrooms in pasta sauce.
With lunch finished, we went down to the Plains of Abraham to look for parking for our visit to Old Quebec. The Plains of Abraham is not only a beautiful park, but also has a most reasonable $9 parking rate for 12 hours.
With parking sorted, we strolled around the outside of the wall down to the boardwalk. Along the way, Ethan made a bracelet and ring for Dong Eun. The three of us have always been close because of how much time we spend together normally, but this road trip has probably strengthened our bond even more because we’re constantly doing things as a family.
It was such a beautiful day that we took our time getting into the main city area. Ethan also had a bit of a tummy ache from eating too much lunch, but some 7 Up helped a little. We never let him drink pop, so this was a special treat courtesy of the Costco hot dogs we had the other night.
When you finally make it down to the main boardwalk area, you’re greeted by the amazing Fairmount hotel. Under the boardwalk is an underground museum but we didn’t want to spend this sunny day underground.
We usually make a stop at the local tourist information centre in each place we visit to get suggested itineraries. In Old Quebec, you take a number and wait. Reminded me of banks in Korea.
As we planned our route, there is always time for Ethan to find something fun. In this case, just sitting and playing with Dong Eun.
We started walking and Ethan found different things to play with…Hanging out on a canon and catching falling leaves were on order for today. He wasn’t sure what the stands for the canons were for, so we talked about what their purpose was, such as they’re on an angle to prevent them from moving too far back after begin fired.
And throwing leaves is always a good time to make an animated GIF…
Ethan found a red maple leaf he liked and wanted to put it in Dong Eun’s hair.
We then walked in the old city and were so amazed by the character, charm and beauty of the area. And it was so clean.
By now we were already impressed by the beautiful, historic architecture, but it never stopped being impressive. We’re not sure how much influence the design and sights have on Ethan but there’s no way he can see all this and not be left with some sort of impression on his mind.
If he didn’t care for the sights, at least he found other things to entertain himself, such as this bug he found amongst the pile of leaves he was walking around with. He talked about how the bug was brown and could hide amongst the leaves. Yes, he likes bugs.
Or this discarded slinky he found in front of the giant mural that he wanted to unravel and play with .
But now it was time to find a snack and poutine was on the radar. We walked through some other nice areas to get to Marché du Vieux-Port.
And we finally had poutine in Quebec! Not sure if this was a good place for it, but we liked it… Actually, Ethan loved poutine and wanted it from Costco for dinner because Costco’s poutine was only $4.25 or something like that.
Dong Eun wanted to visit the Christmas ornament store so we made our way there. We went to one in Germany on our honeymoon so we were curious what this one was like. It was ok, but certainly not like the German one. Ethan was fascinated because he had never been in such a store before. We just had remind him to pay attention to the “Touch at your own risk” warnings on nearly every shelf.
And now it was time for another snack. This time it would be at Paillard’s for their famous croissant. It was a nice walk to get there and we were not disappointed because the croissant was the best we’ve ever had, including the ones we had in France (at least that’s what we kind of remember).
Evening
Since we had parking until 1am, we stayed for the night scenery. It was well worth it, as Old Quebec is equally beautiful at night. I couldn’t help feeling like it would be so cool to live in this area, but I’m quite happy with our place by the beach.
And more animated GIFs are always good.
We walked a lot today, and Ethan was fine the whole day. Quite surprising and we were impressed by what he was able to do. It’s like he’s getting bigger and stronger every day, which he probably is, of course. Or maybe he really did like the views.
I heard from Dong Eun that there’s a Korean drama that was shot partly in Old Quebec. This next spot is one of the views people saw in the drama.
Now we had to find dinner and decided to go to Costco where we could also pick up some fruit and bread. Little did we know that Costco closes at 8:30, so we only had 20 minutes. It was enough to grab a roasted chicken and a bag of baked corn chips to cap off the night.
While finishing up our dinner in the Costco parking lot, one of the staff drove up and asked if we were staying in the parking lot overnight. I guess they don’t like it if people do because she parked her car again and, I think, waited until we left before going home.
Anyway, we’re heading back to the Plains of Abraham tomorrow for another quick view of Old Quebec and the Plains of Abraham park.
If you’re just reading this blog for the first time, we are a family of three traveling across Canada (and likely beyond) in a 1994 VW Westfalia camper van called Juju Jr. Our son Ethan, age 9, is unschooling and so we want him to learn from being on the road and traveling. So he’s also now a roadschooler and we are documenting the trip and his learning on this blog.
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