Wednesday 19th September 2012 ­ Québec City by Foot and Steps ­ Lots of them!! -5hrs BST

Its difficult to do justice to this beautiful city with just one photo so I will describe my afternoon exploration on foot here and another posting and add a series of photos as separate blogs.  The picture above was taken on Tuesday 21^st September on our downstream return journey from Montréal.  It shows the copper roofed Chateâu Frontenac dominating the city skyline.

I began my walk in the “Lower Town” below the cliffs and known as the ‘Basse’ this area is full of beautifully restored and conserved houses in this World Heritage City of 18^th & 19^th century stone houses and churches that align the winding cobbled streets. I spent awonderful hour browsing in the many art galleries, boutiques and handicraft shops enjoying the sunshine and the Parisian style café atmosphere with its jugglers, street musicians and other entertainers.

The Place Royale – one corner of which is shown in a photo post to follow – is surrounded by steep-roofed early 18^th century stone houses with pastel coloured shutters and granite walls that have been sandblasted back to their original glory, and were once the homes of wealthy merchants. The square remains the heart of the Lower Town as well as the site of the oldest standing Roman Catholic Church in North America - the Notre-Dame-des-Victoires.

From here I entered the Rue Petit Champlain, the narrowest walkway in the oldest part of the city. French artisans built homes here n the 1680s followed by Irish dockworkers in the 19^th century.  Their homes have bee transformed into to a myriad of small art galleries and speciality shops where Yes you guessed I found some had carved and painted fridge magnets!!  IN one shop I bought some hand carved clown like magnets and the lady asked me who they were for.  I said me of course and that I only collected handcraft magnets.  Oh she replied these are definitely hand made in the shop I suppose in case I thought they were mass produced in China – many of which are of course!!

Many of the buildings are adorned with 3D murals, very life life-like and shown in one of the photo posts to follow.  It was explained to me that the city had a problem with graffiti artists and to overcome this the perpetrators had been identified and taught how to paint the 3D murals.  There is in fact a ‘mural trail’ that you canfollow round the city to view all the murals that add a charm of their own,remove the harshness of the road flyovers in the modern part of the city and certainly put the talents of the street artists to good purpose.

I should have taken the Funicular Railway to climb to the ‘Haute’ (Upper) part of the city but decided to take the picturesque and aptly named ‘Escalier Casse-Cou or Breakneck Stairs’ to ascend some 140+ steps past several levels of gift shops and outdoor cafés.  I forgot however that this was only the first part of the ascent andanother 150 or so steps led up to the Terrasse Dufferin situated some 200ftabove the waterway!!  This is where Samuel de Champlain built his fort in 1620 and provides spectacular views over the St Lawrence River and to the Laurentian Mountains.  

The Place d’Armes that adjoins the Terrasse is dominated by Québec’s most famous landmark the Château Frontenac (See the photo).  This impressive green turreted (Copper clad and recently renovated so not so green!), replica castle, was built by the Canadian Pacific Railroad as a hotel in 1893 and has 618 luxurious guest rooms.  Named after the Count of Frontenac – a renowned Governor of Québec.  Roosevelt, Churchill and Mackenzie King met to discuss strategy during World War II.  Today the hotel is run by the Fairmont group and the last one I saw of these famous gothic style structures was in July in Banff British Columbia. I slipped inside the sumptuously ornate and wood panelled foyer of this hotel for a peek.

French colonial soldiers used the grassy square just north of he Château Frontenac as a parade ground.  Today it is a maze of small cobbled streets housing artists and frequented by horse drawn carriages. A statue in the centre of the square commemorates the 300^th anniversary of the arrival in 1615 of theCatholic Recollet missionaries.

My exploration continued my into the old walled part of the city - the only walled city north of the Rio Grande - towards the famous Citadelle and the National Battlefield Park but more of that in my next posting.