Week 662 · September 2026 · Québec City, Canada
Québec City is considered the “most European city” in North America and the title is well deserved. The old city area was much bigger than expected — with the upper town and lower town separated by a 250-foot cliff. We got more steps in Québec City than any of the days hiking in national parks.
We spent about a day or two longer in Québec City than our normal pace, which worked out well with some rain-out days and provided some time for a spontaneous day trip — and also a time window for Annelise to join for a couple of days. After our 7-hour ferry came into port in North Sydney, Nova Scotia on Tuesday evening, we still had 12 hours of driving to get to Québec City. We broke it up over a couple of days and made some short stops along the way, staying one of the nights in Rivière-du-Loup — a really nice town with a pretty impressive waterfall in the center of town. We found a good rail trail for a little biking as well that paralleled the highway and St. Lawrence Seaway. Rivière-du-Loup was also our first introduction to Québec — everything in French and our waitress was just learning English (but still much better than our French).
We stayed in the upper town but since there was no parking available, we had to park about a mile away in the newer area of town — similar to St. John's, limited places to park with the rooftop box. The newer area of town is separated from old Québec City by a fortress wall built by the French to defend against the English in the late 1700s — the attack never came. The upper town should be a clue that hills and cliffs are a prevalent part of old Québec City — between the cliff down to the river and the hills cutting across the upper town, it seemed every direction was up a hill. We were on the main street in the upper town — Rue St-Louis (which changes to Grande Allée leaving old Québec City) — which runs parallel to the main commercial street Rue Saint-Jean (which is still in the upper town, but 100 feet down a hill). Everything in the old city looks like it was from the 1700s to 1800s — very impressive and it was only a short walk down to Château Frontenac which is on the edge of the cliff. Between a self-guided walking tour and Sharon and Annelise's foodie tour, we got a good sense of the area and history. We did go into Château Frontenac for a quick look, but generally they didn't allow tourists in most of the day — and one of our fancy restaurants, La Buchette, was in the upper town. Annelise joining forced us to up our game a bit with our dinners out.
Samuel de Champlain founded his settlement — a trading post and habitation — in what is now the Lower Town in 1608, and the city that grew up around it became the nerve centre of French colonial power in the New World for 150 years. Québec City is the only remaining walled city in North America north of Mexico and was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. The walls the French built to keep the British out date to the late 17th and early 18th centuries — the British eventually came not over the walls but up the cliffs. The Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759 lasted barely fifteen minutes yet reshaped the entire continent’s future.
William Van Horne, CEO of the Canadian Pacific Railway, had Château Frontenac built to promote travelling by train as a luxury experience. After opening in 1893, the majestic hotel quickly became a favourite stop among travellers and a venue of choice for fancy parties and big celebrations. Considered the world’s most photographed hotel, Château Frontenac is a cultural monument designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It sits at the edge of the 250-foot Cap Diamant cliff directly above the Lower Town — and the effect, whether seen from the river or from the street below, is of a castle that has simply always been there.
Initially, we thought the lower town was limited to a few streets — Rue du Petit-Champlain being the main one and Place Royale the other main site, which is the exact location where Samuel de Champlain founded the city. But the longer we were there, the more places we found to explore. Between finding the one time of year that the art galleries were open in lower town at night for an annual festival and visiting another nice restaurant, we found a lot more to see. Probably would not have had the time to stumble on to some of these streets had we only been there a couple of days. The lower town is considerably older than the upper town — a lot of places from the early 1600s. Rue du Petit-Champlain is probably the most picturesque street in Québec City.
The disadvantage of lower town is that it is literally lower — the picture below shows one set of stairs (you can't see the top of the stairs) versus the preferred method of the funicular ($5 a trip!).
On the other side of the wall is modern Québec City, where we parked (a couple of times) — split between the traditional downtown with provincial government buildings and the Plains of Abraham battlefield. The battlefield is on a plateau with the cliff straight down to the river — which meant it saw many different battles from different wars. The last was in the mid-1700s and saw the British take final control from the French. Interesting that there are probably more places to eat and nightlife than the old city — but we really only walked through getting to our car.
The Plains of Abraham is the open plateau immediately west of the old walled city of Québec, dropping sharply to the St. Lawrence River below. On the morning of September 13, 1759, 4,500 British troops began to drift down with the tide in small landing craft, scaled the cliffs and reached the open area west of the city known as the Plains of Abraham. After the short battle, the British were victorious, chasing the French back toward the walls of the town. Both commanding generals — Wolfe for the British and Montcalm for the French — were mortally wounded. The battle lasted approximately fifteen minutes.
The outcome changed North America. The French surrendered Québec City, and within two years the Treaty of Paris (1763) ceded virtually all of French Canada to Great Britain. Yet French culture in Québec did not disappear. The city today conducts essentially all public life in French, the province passed its own language laws in 1977, and the Québec sovereignty movement has twice come within a few percentage points of winning a referendum on independence. Adjacent to the Citadel, the Parc des Champs-de-Bataille preserves the grassy clifftop Plains of Abraham, now filled with picnicking families and jogging trails.
With an extra day, we decided to take a day trip — there were several waterfalls recommended: two were about 1.5 hours away and the third was 20 minutes, so we went to the closest — Chutes Montmorency. Much more impressive than we expected. Pro tip if you ever visit: they have two parking lots. We parked in the one at the bottom and had to take another 300-foot staircase — the other parking lot is at the top. One consistent element of the waterfalls was that a dam had been added at the top to control flow and divert water for electricity generation — so all of them have an artificial straight edge across the top.
Park in the upper lot at Chutes Montmorency — not the lower one. The difference is 300 feet of stairs that you have to climb at the end of the day rather than at the beginning. Île d'Orléans is worth a full day on its own: the island has many wineries, farms, and cideries and the loop road is an easy 40 miles. We only visited Vignoble Isle de Bacchus because it was closest to the bridge — it has decent reds, not only the ice wines you might expect. Québec City's old city has very limited parking for anything with a roof box or height clearance issue — budget extra time and expect to park in the modern part of the city outside the walls and walk in.
