Our first stop of the day was la Citadelle, the military base inside Quebec City. Glen and I had been before but it was nice to get a second look inside, plus it was the first time for Donna. We arrived just as the wind began to pick up and sharp snow pelted down. We had the guide – a guy from Belgium – all too ourselves. He took us around, gave us interesting facts, was personable, and did a really good job of trying to look like he wasn’t freezing.
By the time we finished the snow was really coming down. We forsook the new museum in favour of getting to the Parliament building in the hope that a tour would start when we arrived. Although the tour was supposed to start at 12, the guide was already there and once again we had the guide to ourselves. She gave us some information about the building, took us into the Blue Room, and then left us at the restaurant.
Glen and I went for lunch at Le Parliamentaire last time and we were really impressed. It’s the same restaurant that serves all the politicians and takes place in the same room where the official functions take place. You’d expect the price to be exorbitant but you can get a three course meal for $26.
I’m sure the waitress we had was the same Glen and I had too. Donna and I both had cream of spinach soup (delicious). She then had a vegetarian flan thing while I had a turkey dinner (both yum), followed by desserts. Donna had a trio of desserts while I had a chocolate Yule log sponge cake thing. If you’re looking for a place to have lunch during the week in Quebec City, go there. It wasn’t busy either.
The snow really came down while we were at lunch, and it covered us as we walked back to the hostel to retrieve our luggage. Walking along the streets was not nice as our bags struggled over the snow. We walked to the train station with about an hour and a half to wait until our train to Montreal.
The train is comfortable, and has free wifi. I got a bit of work done but not much (I’m worried about my laptop battery dying so I’m not doing much on it…plus I didn’t want to do much work). There’s an annoying woman behind us who keeps talking so I was forced to put headphones in.
We arrived into Montreal at about 6, the city pretty quiet. We caught the train to Berri-UQAM, found the hostel and checked in. The room was in the basement, had it’s own bathroom and two single beds…and a giant air conditioner that we couldn’t turn off. We didn’t really want to turn it off anyway as the room was pretty cold without it, but the fan was pretty noisy, which made sleep a little difficult at times.
After checking in and dumping our luggage, we went in search of food. Donna is vegetarian and it looks as if Montreal isn’t all that keen on vegetarians. Most restaurants had salad but that gets a bit dull after a while. We walked up St-Denis and eventually found a vegetarian restaurant (one of at least two we found, which I think is more than Perth, so perhaps it’s not so vege-phobic).
The restaurant was called Yuen and was a Pan-Asian restaurant, the sort that serves a mix of Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese. They’re popular in Canada but usually they don’t have much flavour other than “bland”. Service was a little slow, but there were people there so we decided to stay and got a bento box thing. It was pretty good and filled a spot. Our dessert never came so we paid and left.
We were late for a pub crawl at the sister-hostel to the one we were staying at. We poked our head in the door where there was some comedy improv taking place but didn’t stay. We wandered the streets for a little while – the very quiet streets – and then, failing to find much of interest, we went back to the hostel for an early night.
Travels with Dan 
What do you say, eh?