Quebec City - old city, Chateau Frontenac, and Grand Prix Cycling

We had been told by many people as we were traveling in the Northeast US and Canada that we should not miss seeing Quebec City. We had planned to see it today, but yesterday, there was such a socked-in rain that we weren't sure it was going to be able to happen. But, this morning, we woke up to a cloudy but not rainy day, and decided to go.

We are staying on the east side of the St Lawrence near Levis, QC. There is a ferry from Levis to Quebec City, and the ferry terminal is right below the old town of Quebec City. So, we drove the Jeep to the ferry, paid CAN$8 to park in the lot, and got our ferry tickets for CAN$13.50 for both of us roundtrip (one adult and one senior).

It appeared that there was a sliding board into a kiddie pool on the lower deck of the ferry - we didn't check it out...

It was pretty cloudy and threatening still. The large building to the right of center is the Fairmont Hotel, Chateau Frontenac.

The area at the bottom of the hill from Old Quebec was quite lovely with stone streets and little shops.

We considered taking the funicular up to the old city, but decided to walk instead... the beginning of the steps...

About halfway up - we had walked up the street below and then climbed some more steps to get to an overpass to a park.

As we looked up the street, we could see a large television monitor and lots of things being set up, streets preparing to be closed... but we didn't know why yet...

Looking down to the town below, this was a painting on the end of a building that made it look like even more buildings were there.

Statue of Cartier - This park "...commemorated the place where the Quebec Conference of 1864 laid the foundations for today's Canada.... Among the architects of the Conference was the illustrious statesman, George-Etienne Cartier." "Canada is a youthful country and will celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2017. The Conference ended with the adoption of the 72 resolutions. Confederation followed in 1867 - Canada."

At the far end of the park we saw cars with lots of *nice* bicycles on the top of them... looking up "events today in Quebec City", we discovered that the Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec was occurring today in and around Quebec City.

Another view of the Chateau Frontenac - it is a very recognizable site.

We stopped for breakfast at a creperie and I got a lemon and sugar crepe - yum!

We then went into the Chateau Frontenac and found more of the cars with bikes here - turns out this was the race hotel.

 

The Lambert & Co shop had neat Father Christmas and well bundled sheep-herders outside their store.

Inside, they had neat carvings inside moose antlers.

Another moose-antler carving

The Chateau Frontenac from further down the boardwalk along the river.

We decided we had not had enough stair climbing, so we proceeded to climb to the top of the citadel.

Atop the walls of the citadel. It was built in such a way that it would just look like a green hill to any enemies trying to attack it, but as they got closer, they would find these deep ditches preventing their access.

This is showing how "The Citadel is concealed from the exterior by the glacis, thus preventing the enemy from directing its cannon fire at any specific target."

An aerial view of the Citadel

The cycling race was to start at 11am, and we ended up getting to the start/finish line just before 11am and saw the start (from behind the racers).

We walked around the area a little more; we weren't understanding why people were staying around... until we got a program that explained that the route would be followed 16 times, so the racers would be coming through again in about 20 minutes.

First group of racers had pulled away from the peleton even at the first trip around.

Not sure what this was - one of the vehicles following the racers...

The race went by where we were going to catch the ferry back to Levis - the incoming ferry coming in; we were stuck on the far side of the street, but the racers came through and we were allowed across in time to catch the ferry.

After it got sunnier - Chateau Frontenac

A view of the area where we walked - from the dockside of the ferry, up around Chateau Frontenac (on the right), then all the way up and over the part on the left (Citadel).

We had a really nice day - it turned off very pretty, in fact, we realized that we should have been happy for the coolness of the morning! It got warm in the afternoon sun. And, we had the added excitement to see a Grand Prix Cycling race. We just were looking online, and it appears that Peter Sagan, from Slovakia, with team Tinkoff (a Russian team) won the race.