Bienvenue a Quebec

Our first full day in Quebec started late; but eventually we headed off on a walk of the fortifications (read: wall) around Quebec. The morning consisted of taking gradually more ridiculous photos; initially imitating soldiers, then imitating the Beatles and eventually jumping over the breaks in the wall in largely failed imitations of a gazelle. Yes, that's right.

Our route around the wall was interrupted by a detour to the smallest street in Canada (which, incidentally, looks like a completely normal sized street to a European) which was very pretty and quaint, with loads of quirky, cute little shops including - to our delight - a chocolate shop. We wandered the surrounding streets, the oldest in Quebec, for a couple of hours, and took longer than we should taking pictures of ourselves integrated into various murals.


Day two began much earlier, and we were only running slightly late to rent bicycles. By now our party of four had been joined by two more Swedish girls, both of whom are sickeningly beautiful. They're also both very thin, and being as I'd spent a large part of the previous evening sat out of a conversation between my travelling buddies about running shoes (quietly thinking to myself 'I just think pizza is delicious'), I was slightly worried about being the heffalump gasping her way uphill whilst everyone else sailed gracefully away a la The Sound of Music.

Fortunately this was not really the case - which can be attributed to the flatness of the bike track rather than fitness - and other than some initial navigation issues, the cycling went really well.

We biked 12km each way to the Montmorency Falls, which were gorgeous - enormous and powerful, with very impressive surroundings (up to and including a shirtless boy running up and down the seven zillion steps, stopping occasionally to do some push ups, whose abs were visible from the bridge). We had a picnic in the sunshine at the top of the falls before biking back to Quebec. I really felt like I earned my ice cream, sat on the boardwalk over the river which reminds me weirdly of the pier in my mums hometown of St Anne's - except it was consistently sunny and you can actually see / hear water - but it was a nice reminder of home. We went to bed achey and knackered but pleased with ourselves.