Boulevard, Chemin, Avenue, Rue, Allée...

Overrated!

   Wednesday (Sept. 30) we were on our way to Quebec City, just under a three-hour drive from Montreal. It was amazing to see how in that short distance, the trees were showing more autumn color!
   Nearly to the city limits, we drove a short distance off the highway to see the Vieux-Chemin, which has the reputation to be one of the most beautiful streets in Canada. This short village lane once served as part of the 18th-century Chemin du Roy (King's Road). Honestly, I could think of a couple streets nearby in Chester County or in my hometown Bethlehem that made this neighborhood look very average.
   We were a bit early for check-in at our Airbnb near the border of the Sillery and Saint-Sacrament neighborhoods of Quebec, so we stopped at the Videotron Centre to pick up tickets for a Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (a BIG deal in Canada) matchup on Sunday, featuring the hometown Remparts and the Blainville Boisbriand Armada. I can’t tell you a whole lot about the opponent, other than their hometown is an off-island suburb of Montreal, and the franchise has only been around for fifteen years.
   The Remparts (French for “ramparts”, referring to the citadel walls) franchise has been around since 1969, this being its second stint in Quebec City. The Remparts have supplied dozens of players to the NHL, most notably Hall of Famers Guy Lafleur and Michel Goulet, as well as current star Nikita Kucherov, who has won a Hart Trophy (league MVP) and two Stanley Cups with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
   During their most recent stint in Quebec, the Remparts were tenants in le Colisée, the former home of the Quebec Nordiques. Built in 1949, the barrel vault-designed building sadly has not hosted a live event since 2015 and is slated for demolition in 2027, when its current lease as a storage facility runs out.

I had to share this Nordiques 1990 photo I found of Hall of Famers
Guy Lafleur, Mats Sundin and my all-time favorite player, Joe Sakic.

   After Sue handled a French-spoken transaction, we headed to our generous accommodations, an upstairs portion of a home, with full kitchen, dining room, living room with big screen television, large bedroom with a queen size and single bed, and bathroom with a his and her vanity. There was even a balcony overlooking the backyard pool (it was too cool during our stay to even care whether we’d be allowed to swim)! Our stay in Quebec was going to be a little less packed with activity, and I had fallen way behind in organizing material for my blog, so that evening I got to work while watching some of the baseball playoffs.

   Looking at the forecast Thursday morning, the weather looked questionable, so armed with an umbrella tucked in our pack, we decided to take a walk downtown, with a bus ride planned for the return trip. We cut across the Plains of Abraham, named after early settler Abraham Martin, the 255-acre park is on the site of the pivotal 1759 battle where British forces defeated the French, fundamentally shaping Canadian history.

We didn't visit every site marked on this map, but most of our stops are included.

   From the park we descended 398 steps on the Cap Blanc Stairs, built in the 19th century. We strolled down Rue Champlain, which is more residential, but while it lacked the overall charm of its brother, the Rue du Petit Champlain, there wasn’t a crowd or shop after shop of boutique fashions and overpriced souvenirs!

   The small street connects with Champlain Boulevard, and we were eventually forced to deal with the mobs of window shoppers on Petit-Champlain. We then turned onto the not-as-famous-but-just-as-quaint streets, Sous-le-Font and Notre-Dame, so we could reach the Côte de la Montagne. This climb, featured in the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec, a UCI World Tour event, may only be about a quarter-mile long, but it is STEEP, and the pros do it each of their 20 laps around the 6.5-mile circuit. I had it in my mind to include it in a future ride (just once, though) during our stay.
   At the top, we turned left onto Fort Street and walked up to Dufferin Terrace for some great views, right in front of the Hotel Frontenac. The terrace access to the hotel was undergoing some renovations, so we walked around to the street entrance, just to sample the opulence from the lobby.

   We walked up the Rue Saint-Louis, passing many shops and restaurants on our way. At the Porte de Saint-Louis (photo below), we climbed up to the fortified wall and strolled along the top for a few blocks. We descended at St. John’s Gate and made our way to the Place d’Youville and bought tickets at the transit center there for our eventual bus ride back to the Airbnb.

 
   A couple blocks away was Tutto Gelato, our planned last stop for the day. Initially I was a little confused what language I should use, but I enjoyed my Italian order of caramello al fior de sale, as did Sue with her combination of frutti di bosco y mango!

   Friday really looked like a washout, as it was still raining when we sat down to eat breakfast. However, the sun came out and dried things up well enough that we headed out for a ride late in the afternoon. Our route (see map on left - click to enlarge) wasn’t too unlike the walking tour we took the day before, except that we made our way down to Champlain Boulevard by heading southwest and coasted down to the riverside via the Chemin Saint Louis and the Côte de Sillery.
   As we turned downriver towards the city on the wonderful bike path, we both noted having soreness in our calves, and we could only assume it was from the long decent down the Cap Blanc Stairs the day before. Figuring as our muscles warmed, things should loosen up, we pedaled into the Old Port area.
   We were now riding on the Corridor du Littoral, as noted on several signs we spotted along the bikeway. Not being sure what it meant, Sue made a joke, knowing my pet peeve of people overusing/misusing the word “literally”, that you were only allowed to use metaphors and symbolism while speaking on the corridor. She later found out the word littoral means “coastal” or “shoreline”.
   We looped up to the crossing of the St. Charles River on the Boulevard Jean-Lesage bridge and weaved through an industrial zone that included a couple railroad crossings. Soon we were into a nicer public park area, but we had to be very cautious with the wet leaves that covered the curvy path that undulated through the area. The bikeway soon paralleled the beach on Beauport Bay, though our views were obstructed by Autoroute 440, which separated our route from the water.
   There were also some low spots along the right-of-way that didn’t drain particularly well, and we coasted slowly across some large puddles so that we wouldn’t soak our shoes. There were several spur trails to the beach, as well business or residential spots that intersected the bikeway, but it was marked fairly well and really, as long as we continued along the highway, it was hard to be misdirected.
   About five miles outside of the park, we crossed the highway, very near the Orleans Island Bridge over the St. Lawrence, and entered Montmorency Falls Park. You wouldn’t be surprised to hear that we weren’t interested in paying the fee to view the falls from the nearer bridge the trail shared with the passenger rail line. We instead stayed on the Corridor du Littoral and snapped a photo of the falls from the shared highway bridge:

   Sue looked at the wooden stairway with hundreds of steps leading to the foot of the falls and said, “No thanks!” I saw the spindly bridge crossing over the brink of the falls and muttered exactly the same sentiment.
   We retraced our route back to the St. Charles, but instead turned up the river on a beautiful park-side trail and looped up onto Pont Dorchester and made our way back via on-street bike lanes. We were a bit redirected by some construction, but we eventually intersected the some of the same streets on which we first entered Quebec, so we were familiar with the route back to our apartment.
   I know Sue enjoyed driving up the hill towards the Plains of Abraham much more than cycling up it, but she grinded her way along, at a comfortable pace. I was reminded of one of the cycling commentators who covers many of the races we watch. He loves to say, “Climbs are only as difficult as you make them - the faster you ride, the worse they are.”