It finished with a bang!

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

For our last day in Quebec, we had decided to explore the old town a bit more. Although we had already been to the citadelle, we hadn't had much time to look around the rest of town so we once we were up and ready we started heading up hill. We went to Tim Horton's first for some breakfast, geting an egg and bacon muffin with a hash brown - nice. We then made our way to St John gate which we climbed up to take in the view. Whilst up there, we saw some people in period costume below saying something was happening in 10 minutes. They turned out to work for the Artilary museum which is just by the gate, and were there to do a black powder demonstration. We stuck around to watch, taking a few photos of the gun shot whilst there, and then afterwards decided to check out the museum.

The museum was quite intersting with lots of information about the original fortifications that made up the city and later the work that was made to make the city more attractive. To improve the local economy the city started celebrating it's history as a fortified city early in the 19th century and it remains the only fortified city in North America, becoming a world heritage site in 1985. Leaving the main museum, we visited the separate site nearby that houses the old barracks. The barracks are currently undergoing restoration work, but there are 3 floors of rooms to explore inside. It was all quite interesting, and we found ourselves back outside just as they were about to perform the black powder demonstration again. After watching for a second time, we headed back up the ramparts and continued walking along eventually ending up back at ther Dufferin Terrace.

On the terrace, we decided to have a look at the remains of the foundations of the old chatau which are underneath the terrace. Tickets were only $4 each so we headed on down. There is information boards explaining the different areas of the ruins and cases containing some of the archeological finds, again was quite interesting taking about 40 minutes to work our way through. Back up on the terrace we tooks some photos and grabbed a drink in the Starbucks. By coincidence, whilst getting the drink the starbucks, the barista asked if it was my last night and mentioned that there was going to be a fireworks show that you could watch from the terrace! After our drinks we headed back down to the hotel for bit before tea. We had tea at Buffet de L'Antiquaire, the place we had previously visited for breakfast. This time we had club sandwiches each with chips - there was a lot of it, but it was very nice, and good value.

Later in the evening, we headed back up to the terrace for the fireworks, they were due to start at 10, and when we headed up just after 9 it was already really busy, we'd looked them up online back at the hotel and apparently they are watched by as many as 700,000 people. We had a great view of the fireworks, it was a great way to end our last night here! Got back to the hotel a bit before 11 and packed up our stuff ready for Boston tomorrow!