A Day in Quebec City

It’s not a Lange vacation without a visit to either a maritime museum or a military museum. Today’s visit was to La Citadelle de Québec. We were very lucky that it was the first day of the changing of the guard show that only runs in the summer. We arrived early as it was only a 10 minute walk from our hotel. We were greeted by a guide who was the grown up image of Russell, the young boy from the movie UP. He had his trustee canteen hanging jauntily on his hip.

We had to stand through the half hour changing of the guard parade of the Royal 22nd regiment. They are the only French speaking British regiment. So the ceremony took place all in French. One officer would scream at another officer and this is what is sounded like to me if I were translating the French to English, (again screaming) “I’m Jean Val Jean. We know each other well.” All while the military band played the top hits from Les Miserables.

The best part of the ordeal was the regimental goat with the gold horns which was first a gift from Queen Victoria in the 1950’s. How thoughtful. Let’s take a goat into to war with us. It is a cashmere goat at least. Maybe one guy can get socks out of it.

The citadel was quite impressive. It has five star shape ramparts and it situated on the highest part of Quebec City overlooking the St. Lawrence River. It has something like 80 cannons. It was built to protect Canada from the US, and was never actually needed since the US never attacked Quebec. Sadly now a drone could take it out, but back in the day, it was really something. At least it still has the goat.

Tonight Russ took me to an extraordinary dinner that was not just fabulous, but quite a deal. And we all know I love a deal. It was at a place called Le Clan and it has a Michelin Star and has only been open since 2021. All of the food came from Quebec with the exception of some French Mustard and Hibiscus from Martinique.

We had the six course tasting menu, but there were like four extra courses thrown in. If you read French you might be able to figure out what we had, but these descriptions leave out a lot of information. I would say there were at least double the number of important ingredients than the ones lists in the descriptions.

The place was beautiful. The service was impeccable. The food inspiring. And the logo darling. Go if you can.

Quebec has been fun, but it’s time to go to New Hampshire in the morning.