Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Frenchiemoon: Canada, Part 1 - Quebec City

After lunch at The Essex, Mr Frenchie and I piled our suitcases in our trusty Rogue and headed for the Canadian border.



Once across the border (which was totally easy by the way) we drove about 3 hours to Quebec City. Quebec City is one of the oldest cities in North America and also the only remaining fortified city.
See that adorable entrance to the city? We drove through that 4 times looking for our hotel. Inside the walls, if I remember correctly there was only 1 two-way street. We had printed directions to our hotel from the address that was on Google. Oh, trusty Google, you had never steared me wrong until then. We drove down Rue Saint Anne 3 times without seeing Hotel Acadia.


We noticed some restaurants and hotels on the part of Rue Saint Anne that you can't drive on, so we decided to park the car and walk down that street. We found a parking structure, parked the car, unloaded all 3 of our suitcases and started walking. We walked down the other side of the street and noticed the numbers were going in the wrong direction, FRICK! and then is started to rain (and my hair does NOT do well in the rain), double FRICK!

We ducked into the first hotel on St Anne to asked if they had any idea where our hotel was...
Me: "Parlay voo englay?" (pheonetic spelling)
Concierge: Yes
Me: YES!

I had been practicing my French phrases from the back of our Quebec/Montreal travel book. Since we hadn't spoken to anyone but ourselves since we entered Canada, we had no idea how much French, or English, we would encounter. The concierge had never heard of our hotel and kept asking, "Hotel or Motel? That is very important." Ummm HOTEL, HO-TEL! Mr Frenchie did not book us a Motel for our honeymoon, thankyouverymuch. After asking around and Googling our hotel he discovered that Google has the wrong address list and our hotel was a couple streets up.

A short, but slightly wet, walk later we found Hotel Acadia and checked in. Hotel Acadia was a cute little 41 room, boutiquey hotel.



Although, they couldn't care less that their address is incorrect on Google, we found the rest of our stay to be charming. Even though we had the smallest room, on the 5th floor, with no stairs, I wouldn't complain and would totally recommend this hotel. The valet always offered to carry whatever we needed to our room and the staff was very nice. I'm sure it didn't hurt that we LOVED Quebec City!

Our first night (since it stopped raining) we decided to go back down the undrivable portion of St Anne and eat dinner outside at one of the restaurants we'd seen earlier.
This time I remembered to take pictures of the food...

Mr Frencie and I LOVED the parmesan fondue! We had no idea it was going to be more like parmesan croquettes, with a little salad. We didn't find on the menu in any other city, but we did find a recipe online that we want to try out soon.

Did you eat any foods on your honeymoon you want to recreate at home? Do you have a recipe to share?

Up next: More Quebec City and Montreal!

2 comments:

  1. That is the best Technology we have now a days for our families.

    ReplyDelete
  2. IT is not just you Mr. Frenchie but my husband does the same as well. Whenever we are on trip, there is something missing in our luggage and the blame is on me. I would like to share with you our this year's trip which was quite different from the past because we had a better package from one of our referrers. We clicked the http://www.tripindicator.com/ and selected a deal according to our budget as this is saving of your budget and time as when you are on a trip so it is your luck to visit every important place but you can't because of the time restrain in your way but this was the first trip of ours that we visited every place we planned of and the most importantly the polite behavior and the style of the guide was salute-able. I would prefer that every person who wants to save on the tour must consult the above link.

    ReplyDelete