Elegant company

With only the briefest stop at the Sanctuaire Notre Dame du Cap , where the stained glass windows were incredibly beautiful, we drove straight to Montreal.

Our lovely friend here is Nadine, who wears the most fantastic shoes and is the most elegant and gracious guide.  Oscar the poodle’s loss is our gain!

The artwork on the street is interesting and eye catching.

Some could be described as quirky.

Sometimes we have to stop and smile.

Across a busy dual carriageway, this lovely painting caught our eye immediately.

By this time, we were getting hungry but Nadine knew just the spot for a perfect summer Friday lunchtime.  A little music, lush greenery and lively conversation with friends around a shady table in the garden: what more could we wish for?

Leaving Nadine to go home to dear Oscar the Poodle, we set off to explore a little more of the city and loved the glimpses of silvery domes in the Old Town

and the contrast between old and new.

We had to stop and take photographs of this great bronze “Les Chuchoteuses” (the gossips).  Such characters!

Negotiating the road works was a challenge at times and we thought the city strangely quiet considering its size.  This was a Friday afternoon, after all.

But then, we discovered the Underground City!

We’d arranged to meet Nadine for dinner and were delighted to discover that the restaurant was only doors away from shoe heaven.  Well, at least two of us were thrilled ;-)

There followed a brief “shoe shuffle” with the assistance of the delightful Marie-Helene whose patience was remarkable but not unrewarded.

Dinner, of course, was divine.

Shaky

We can’t help ourselves but take photographs of the lovely things which surround us here.

Mark’s patience is tried as Mary and I make frequent stops to capture another little treasure.

They are so beautifully displayed with flair and imagination.  But of course, there’s a world out there to discover and it’s no good hanging around here all day ;-)

The Montmorency Falls are to be found just up the road and we headed there this morning.  We chose to forego the opportunity of walking over the bridge in favour of viewing the falls from a more solid walkway.

One of us finds climbing too many stairs a challenge, so sadly (!) we had to forego the chance to take this route to view the falls as well.

Did you hear me sigh with relief?

We’d got quite a list of waterfalls to visit today, and the “Sept Chutes” was the next location along the way.  Here, it wasn’t so easy to get up close and we contented ourselves with viewing just five of them from a picnic spot in the woods.

Third and final waterfall stop was the Canyon Ste Anne, where the woman in the ticket office reassured us that it was an easy, flat walk around the pathways.

She didn’t mention that bridge.

There might have been more challenging ways of getting across the canyon but believe me, walking across that narrow, swinging, bouncing, wooden footway which had gaps in between the planks was frightening enough for me.

No, I didn’t stop to take a photo.

Yes, my knees were shaking by the time I reached the other side!

We made a short stop on the way home to visit the Jerusalem Cyclorama, adding another panorama to our collection.  Though beautifully painted, we felt that the area in between the viewing platform and the painted canvas was not so well integrated as other panoramas have been.  The figures were two dimensional and blended into the scene less effectively than, say, those in the Sevastopol panorama.  Nevertheless, the spectacle was as stunning as we’d hoped and finished our day’s sightseeing off nicely.

To Montreal tomorrow.  A bientot Nadine!

A fine city

We are enjoying our few days in Quebec tremendously.  Our hotel is so stylish with visual stimulation around every corner.  We have yet to spell out anything from the letters on the carpet but can’t help reading them every time we walk along the corridor.

Loving colour as much as I do, I was particularly captivated by the arrangement of apples on a tray in the lobby, the colours of which matched the furnishings perfectly.  Gorgeous.

The visual stimulation doesn’t stop at the hotel door, either.  Here, outside a perfectly ordinary shop in the old town, there’s a fantastic pair of planters with colour to make the heart sing.

In fact, throughout the old town, we find ourselves taking hundreds of photographs, all three of us!

Little windows in stone walls, begging to be captured and taken home.

Little flower filled streets, at this time of the morning, peaceful and empty.

Of course, that soon changes.  Street musicians entertain us, though this one amused too, in his 17th century French dress, playing Abba hits.  Strangely, the music carried on as he stopped to take the money from someone buying a CD!

But really, walking along the Terrasse Dufferin boardwalk, high above the river, it’s easy to imagine we are back in Victorian times.

When life was as gracious and relaxed as we are.

O Canada

We made it over the border with only a cursory look at the passports and a couple of questions this morning and here we are in Quebec.

We have to remember “on parle Francais ici” – or rather, we have to remember that everyone else does.

We paid a brief visit to the fort at Chambly before taking a scenic route along the “Rue des Patriotes”

The monument to the Patriotes in St Denis sur Richelieu was another small diversion before we took to the motorway for the last drive to Quebec.

We loved these white metal roofed churches along the way – this one taken using the zoom on my camera from a speeding car, but hopefully giving an idea of what attracted us to them.

As we neared Quebec, the skies cleared and the sun came out.  Phew.

Our hotel is stunning, with the most charming features: this one in my bedside table!

Hotel art here is a series of museum-quality installations.  More to follow!

Our after dinner walk along the Dufferin terrace was accompanied by another stunning sky.

What a backdrop to a fine city.  We are so excited to be back here and can’t wait to explore tomorrow.

Mary is excited too.

Dejeuner sur l’herbe

Goodness me, some French and we’re not even in Canada yet!

The lakes here in the Adirondack region are beautiful and there are some gorgeous mansions along the shores.  The trouble is, these lakefront properties with their lush gardens make getting down to the lake for plebs like us very difficult indeed.

It was a beautiful day, not too hot but warm enough to enjoy being out of doors. We stopped by a deli and put a picnic together, hoping to find a spot by the water where there was peace enough to sit and read but with perhaps, a bit of boaty action.

After a long drive and a few false dawns, we found a tiny little place by the Raquette River.  If the three of us sat in a particular formation, there was room to all sit down at the same time!

With the car carpets as picnic rugs and our deli picnic, we aspired to a kind of relaxed atmosphere the title suggests.

But Mary advised us about the perils of the US wild countryside: poison ivy and poison oak, doing a quick recce to check that we’d be ok.  Had we thought of such things ourselves?  Never.

I sat down regardless, only to be spooked by a small frog which had been sitting nearby until this rather larger creature decided to share his space.  I am not good with jumpy things and became rather jumpy myself as a result.

The three of us sat in this tiny spot and ate our picnic in a mild state of anxiety.  Relaxed we were not.

We ate our sandwiches and moved right along!

There was pretty countryside to drive through and eventually, a few public picnic tables by Saranac Lake, very close to the deli where we’d started our route this morning.  We sat and read, watching families returning from a day out on the lake get their boats out of the water and load them onto the enormous trailers for the journey home.

We returned to Lake Placid ourselves as the skies darkened and another thunderstorm appeared imminent.

We’re heading over the border into Canada today and looking forward to a few days in Quebec.

A bientot!