In Quebec city we were lucky to find a free parking spot right at the citadel. If you visit the museum, you can leave the car there for the rest of the day. That is what we did. This citadel is actually still used by the 22nd Battalion of the French Canadian Army. After touring the citadel (started by the French in 1750 and completed by the British in 1850) for an hour we walked the city walls (4.6 km) around the old town centre. The town is built on a mountain which blocks off most of the St. Lawrence river. Therefore this was a good point to control the access to the Great Lakes route. The citadel as well as part of the city is built on the cliffs along the river. There are several gates to enter the city. Along the water front is a section of old town with narrow streets, small old houses and many restaurants. Further uphill inside the city walls you have the more upmarket building like the cathedral as well as the famous Le Chateau Frontenac. This railway hotel was built in 1893 to receive the guests from o.a. the Empress of Ireland cruise ships from Europe before the passengers boarded the train to Vancouver and then possibly on to Asia. In one of the small restaurants in town, Jamaliah tried the famous Poutine. It is a local snack made with potato sprinkled with cheese curds and gravy. Our luxury version had also lots of mushrooms. The next day we went back in to town to wander up and down the lovely old steep streets again and visited the Museum of Civilisation. It had an interesting (temporary) section on Pompei as well as local history (Colonial) and the Inuit. After that, we left the town and drove halfway to Montreal trying to follow the coast road along the St. Lawrence. Again you drove through many nice towns which are getting bigger and bigger. In the end we took the motorway to make some progress. We spent the night in the Bird sanctuary park (which has a nice boardwalk over the swamp but covered with mosquitoes). Fortunately we brought along mosquito net (we bought these in Iceland for the flies) that we can use to cover our face. There were 5 campers spending the night here one bigger than the other.
Rudy Welling's Travels 