Hotel Chateau Grande Allee Quebec City

There was little life on the empty streets of the Old Town which became old probably hundreds of years ago and never came back to life again. Sleepy cafes with strangely impotent coffee, bored prostitute on the stairs of the Museum of American Civilization, an ice rink with cheerful French music from municipal loud speakers but few skaters around - hardly a better place to spend another hundred years in lethargic oblivion.

... the Citadel, a fortified military base that is still in use today. We venture into the Chateau Frontenac overlooking the harbour and there at the dock is our ship. We brave the cold as long as we dare and decide to end the tour and board our ship early.

We depart mid afternoon to Toronto and catch a delayed connection to Quebec City to arrive very late Thursday evening. Our stay is at a the Hotel Chateau Laurier, a mid range full service hotel adjacent to the Military Armoury. The room is small but the price is just right. There is a St Hubert Chicken in the Hotel - this place also serves breakfast.

... home of the Royal 22nd Regiment, the famous Van Doos, and is also an official residence of the Governor General. Anyway we cast about in rainy futility on the Plains of Abraham trying to figure out how to get inside of the actual fort. Up hills and down hills and along steep parapets; we could see cars parked inside so we knew damn well there had to be an entrance somewhere.

Eventually we found the secret and joined up with a guide who led us on a tour ...

... 23rd Sept. Got up earlyish and disappointed to see its still raining and hard! So had another quiet start to the day watching trashy American tele and emailing etc which I have enjoyed tho. Catherine and Mike both finish work at 3pm so they came in, and we played some more rock band on the Wii, my drumming is getting pretty amazing! We had a few drinks whilst playing that before heading to L'envers which is a bar 5 minutes away. We were slightly well oiled when we arrived then the ...

... is a beautiful city, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It is very French and if you didn’t know better you would think that you were in France, we particularly enjoyed some French onion soup for lunch. As to be expected there were a lot of tourists around, and somehow that seems to distract from a cities appearance. Still it’s a great city.  

THE taxi driver took one look at our skis and shook his head. "I can't fit those in here." He declared surlily.

So began our 2009 Canadian Ski Marathon.

Marina, my Bulgarian/Canadian friend, had emailed me several months before my planned January and February visit to Canada and bounced the idea of taking part in the 160 Km, two day, Canadian Ski Marathon (CSM). On my previous Canadian visits we had enjoyed many weekend days out on the well-groomed cross ...

... was in the waiter said "ask if you don't understand anything, i know it's pretty daunting! hahahaha!" yeah funnily enough mate we have chinese restaurants in britain too... honestly! Saying that Toronto was much nicer than i recalled... as previously mentioned i was miserable when there last. Anyway next morning was the tube, bus, plane, airport, another plane and i'm LA. One night there, one morning in the glorious sunshine. To wake up to palm trees ...

... good job and made it really smooth. I felt a bit sorry for her, as I'm not that good at crafty type things, so her mask wasn't as smooth as mine...but she decorated it really nicely so it looked really good! After that we had to sign up for the excursions for the next week. I signed up to go to the Biodome in Montréal. The queue wasn't that bad, and I decided to do that instead of rafting, because you can do rafting anywhere in the world, and I ...