backpost 3 - Quebec city

in canada there is this thing called allo stop and basically you sign up for membership and the company puts you in contact with a driver whose going to the same city as you are. from montreal to quebec city it costs $16 per person, nearly a 3rd of the price of the bus.

so on monday morning inga and i got a ride to quebec city, and met up with ingas boyfriend there. i know i keep saying this but quebec is gorgeous. there is this massive castle (le Chateau Frontenac - built in 1893) by the water that is cool to look at by day but at night its lit up and is just amazing. there is a wall that goes around the city that also gets lit up and it has arches in it (i dont know if they were there originally) so that you can get from one side of the wall to the other via the cobblestone streets and we walked through one archway and came to an outside skating rink with fairy lights everywhere. this is how these people live from day to day i cant get over it, if we had anything this cool, or something like tam tam (see previous post) it would only be during peak tourist/holiday season. i'm starting to dislike australia's attitude! laid back and relaxed my arse!! we are SO laid back we dont DO anything!! *cough* and cannons line the coast, groups of them are nearly the whole way round the island. naturally i jumped up on one and inga took photos.

they have what they call uppertown and lowertown quebec, back in the old days all the important people lived in uppertown and all the plebs and poor people lived in lowertown. you can stand on the edge of uppertown looking over lowertown and you're still about 10m above the tallest roof. the stairs to get between the two are pure evil, one is even called break-neck staircase... hmmm... (i dont want to know how that came about). but its worth it. the shops are so cute and they're in cobble stone streets that a car could barely drive through. the restaurants and houses are spectacular. somehow i dont think the plebs actually lived like that back in the day.

we went out that night to an underground pub where there is live music. this cool french singer was there and the entire pub was drunk and singing (it was a monday night). we played quaters (a drinking game) and caught up with the rest of the bar (i think we drank more than the pub night in montreal if thats possible). at one stage inga and her friends were outside and i ran outside to tell her something and had left my coat inside. on the way back in there was these 2 guys blocking the stairs talking and i was just standing there waiting and ended up getting so cold i've just put my arms under this guys jacket, hugged him smiled and said 'hi, your warm and my jackets inside'. he couldnt believe his luck and i ended up grabbing my coat and split up from inga. she wrote the address and phone number of where i was staying on my hand like i was 5 or something and sent me off. the guy and his brother showed me a nice time in quebec city for a few hours and then i returned to inga via cab - reading the address off my hand. we got hungry at like 3 am and went to the allnight service station on the corner where you have to buzz the door, the guy unlocks it and lets you in then locks you in agian. he was fully learing at us, made us noodles and then said we can both live with him in quebec if we like. i've looked at inga and was quickly coming up with a plan to throw the metal chip stand through the glass doors if we had to make an escape but then more people buzzed on the door and we paid for our items and bolted. very strange man.