Saturday, October 1, 2016.
Part 2: Lunch In Quebec City.
Our wanderings through Quebec's old town take us past the restaurant where the Eat Club dined last time we were here. Aux Ancienne Canadiens. The name comes from a novel set in the early years of Canada, the author of which lived in the place in the early 1800s. The building is much older, having gone up in 1676. The food is robust and country-style, which is a good description of Quebecois cuisine in general. The servers are dressed in regional and historical clothes. It's regarded by the locals as a tourist place, but I am in fact a tourist, and find the place as interesting as it is good.
But we keep on walking, past many cafes specializing in crepes and omelettes, and that horrific Canadian snack food called poutine. That word translates into the cheese-and-gravy-topped French fries that are popular in New Orleans poor boy shops, but with a different, much lighter kind of cheese.
We finally fetch up at a hotel with a large outdoor dining area and a French menu. What catches my eye are the mussels, since this is mussel country. They are served with what's universally called "white wine sauce." I've seen that moniker from Belgium to Italy to New York to home. It's misleading. The sauce is a thick affair that appears to be founded on mayonnaise, with the wine being barely detectable. It is very good, however. (The one I had during my honeymoon with MA in Ghent, Belgium made my mussels highwater mark.)
The restaurant here is populated by young people having lingering lunches with wine and cheese and pates and the like. The waiter encourages a leisurely pace. The trees nearby are still mostly green--we won't see many bright reds and oranges and yellows until we're on our way to the airport tomorrow--but the entire area is very pleasant. The Frenchness of it all keeps me thinking that indeed we are in France.
We walk off lunch with a climb up stairs up the side of the lofty hill in the center of old town. It is quite a climb, and every time the stairs take a turn, we expect the the hike is near its end--but it never is. No wonder they have funicular lifts here and there.
The shops here seem a bit more everyday than the ones below. Here is where you go for your magazines and newspapers and cigarettes and produce. The streets are also less amenable to finding one's way around, and we lose our way. But around the corner is a tourist information shop. Since we are so high up the hill, we can see the entire route from where we are to the ship. En route, we encounter three major weddings, with carillon bells playing their familiar nuptial melodies.
I've said this every time I've been in Quebec City, and it's affirmed again: the old town has few modern buildings, and the old ones are striking. That, added to the nice people, the shops and restaurants, and the French language, make me wish the New Orleans French Quarter were more like it. Everything about Quebec feels clean and substantial, compared with what we have at home.
But we do have better food than Quebec does.
Back at the ship, this voyage is clearly winding down. I show up for our nightly cocktail hour, but it's a half-hour before anyone else turns up. The waiters in the dining room are saying good-byes while making bananas Foster (yes!).
As I walk around the ship, I ask perfect strangers how they liked the show last night. Almost everyone I so importune says it was great. "Did you like my song?" I ask.
"What was your song?"
"Come Fly With Me! I was the Sinatra wanna-be!"
"Oh! That was you? You are very good!" Music to my ears.
Less fun but some release of tension comes when I learn that the cruise line rescheduled many of the airline flights to make them actually possible. I go to the desk to check this out, and I am given new flight numbers and departure times for my own afflicted travel plans. This is what I have been asking for. After a week, I finally have it.
But not everybody does. John Volpe--who sells the commercials on my radio show--had a particularly horrible flight roundup, one he shared with me yesterday afternoon in Real Time. Between the ship and New Orleans, he will have to spend a night in a hotel in New York. What a mess this has been.
Sunday, October 2,2016.
Walking Around Quebec City Some More.
All passengers on the Princess Caribbean must disembark today. Our orders are to be the last to leave, at a quarter to eleven. We are taken by bus to spend one more night in Quebec City. We will be in the astonishing Chateau Frontenac. It's the most-photographed hotel in the world, and looks like a castle. It's a Fairmont hotel now, but its raison d'ete was to be an overnight stop for passengers on the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railroads.
We arrive noonish, and after an initially chaotic check-in, Lynn and I find ourselves in a two-bedroom suite whose windows look directly at the immense clock tower in the center of the Frontenac address. It is very impressive.
We take another walk around, helped by the altitude of the hotel. First stop is for lunch, in what looked like a charming crepe and omelette café. It has a large outdoor area and a setup for a band that would begin playing shortly.
The dining was uninspiring. The waitress decided not to speak much English, which casts a pall on the situation. Nor did she want to take orders for more than two courses at a time. At least we won't have that problem of two hot dishes arriving simultaneously.
As hard as I tried to come across as friendly and eager to be there, we never get a warmup from the server. The food is forgettable. That's what I get for not checking my guidebook before we left.
After that, we spend a long time on the boardwalk along the riverfront. It resembles the New Orleans riverfront, except that the Quebec frontage on the St. Lawrence is not much developed. Musicians play every block or two. An exhibit of Salvador Dali sculptures appear every hundred feet or so. From any angle, Chateau Frontenac looks ever more amazing.
We discuss having a drink in the hotel's impressive bar--where I had a Negroni four years ago. But I am out of energy, and the stresses of the past two weeks are subsiding. I need a nap. At least I won't be kept awake by another round of disaster.
Or would I? At around nine p.m., Mary Ann calls to ask me why I am not at Chez Boulay. Our original plans were to hold an Eat Club finale dinner there tonight. But not as many of our group were spending the extra night as I hoped for. And the four-a.m. flights would be a problem for a dinner that starts the night before at nine p.m. I canceled the event over a week ago. I did this with regret, because we dined at Boulay last time we were in Quebec, and found it spectacularly fine, with an exotic menu that covered not only the local styles but also dishes from other northerly places in the world.
But Mary Ann didn't know this, and had confirmed our appearance with twenty-four people. Some showed up, but not enough for the management not to be rightfully upset at our absence. This was the last thing I wanted to hear, but I can't blame it on anyone else but myself. It made me sick. I could only think that this will be the last cruise I ever organize.
Monday, October 3, 2016.
Traveling All Day Homeward.
Our revised airline tickets have us leaving Quebec at eight in the morning. An hour to the airport, then a three-hour wait to check in, followed by a flight to Newark. Now three hours to Houston, followed by the short hop to New Orleans. Lynn was more miserable than I was, with a developing cold that had stopped up her ears. Agony in the sky for her. Mary Ann picked us up at around nine p.m. after sitting in for me on the radio show I had expected to do myself. Then home, my favorite place to be at this point in time.
