France under the British Crown

After a great night (I had a bed all to myself - Shahaatz had his own) we are heading to Quebec City today. Of course, the usual travel preparations must be made in advance. Pack your bags, make coffee and of course get a rental car. Shahaatz sacrifices himself because he is the only one who can speak English well. At the rental car station you'll have dejavu - standing in line at the car rental company.

After a little more than an hour, our economy upgrade car is parked in front of the hotel, a black Nissan Maxima, 300 HP, 3.5l V6🤩🏎️ in black.

The ride today is very, very wet

and not exactly exciting in terms of scenery, but fast😁. Shahaatz does what you do when it's not exciting

and I ask myself the question, why do people speak French here, in a Commonwealth country with King Charles III as head?

Facts

In Canada, French is spoken as one of the two official languages, along with English. (However, there is no obligation to speak both languages. When I was researching a supermarket, someone complained that no one in the supermarket spoke French).

In the 17th century, French settlers founded the colony of New France along the Saint Lawrence River. The province of Quebec was founded in 1763. After the British won control of Canada in the Seven Years' War, French was initially abolished as an official language. It was not until 1969 that French was reintroduced and recognized as one of the official languages of Canada.

In today's Canada, French is spoken primarily in the former area of the New France colony, i.e. in Quebec, Ontario and Brunswick. It should be mentioned that Montreal is the largest city after Paris where French is the official language.

Knowledge of French would be great, because the further we get to Quebec City, the less English we encounter. Not on signs,

and sometimes not on menus. Thank God for creating wise minds who invented Google Translate and Microsoft Photography Translator.

It's raining when we finally reach our hotel. These old Canadian cities are a traffic disaster. Everything is just one-way streets and stop signs. To get to the house around the corner I had to drive around for 10 minutes, terrible.

We move into a room in a really cute hotel,

Centrally located in the old town, the Hôtel Le Clos Saint-Louis. We live, how could it be otherwise, on the 4th floor under the roof -

and of course without an elevator. There's no way I'm dragging my suitcase up there. Said and not done either. What does a woman need for 2 days! - that fits in a jute sack. However, Shahaatz wanted to do strength training. While I was trying to find a parking space, Shahaatz ran up and down the stairs about 5 times to bring the clothes into the room. This is good for your legs, butt and arms.

The room is furnished with great attention to detail. You feel like you've been transported back to the time of King Louis XIV, only with air conditioning, a coffee machine and an annoyingly loud refrigerator.

After we finally found a home for our car (if we had known that you had to reserve a parking space at the hotel in advance, it would have saved us a lot of time) and it has now stopped raining, the time has come for our second meal of the year to be taken daily.

It's supposed to be the best French onion soup (they've ever tasted). Then off to the pub. I don't know how many worn out, wet wooden steps we had to climb down.

to get to the lower village - and we all have to go up there again. In the lower village (that's what I call it) there are small streets with souvenir shops and pubs/restaurants. A really beautiful city worth seeing, which you can judge in the dark.

But back to the onion soup. The pub is a rustic building, by the way one of the oldest pubs here in Quebec City,

The beer was delicious but the handmade onion soup still has potential. A more onion, a little wine and a little more heat would have done her good. But she was happy to eat without the risk of burning her nose.

Since, as we all know, you can't stand on one beer leg - let's move on to the next pint.

(It's a good thing that the vacation is almost over, then the constant drinking of beer will finally come to an end. And no, we don't just drink beer.

And there we see them...

🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩 a cog railway.

Yeah, no traipsing up the stairs.

After a nightcap, we finally go to bed.