Day 5 McGill's Go Up North - Quebec City

Day 5! Woke up early, cleaned up the Airbnb, packed up and made a plan on how to get the car back out of the courtyard without scratching it up anymore haha. Luckily two of the neighbors already left and that gave us a little more room to get the car out.

The video below is after we turned the car around inch by inch inside the courtyard... all that was left is to drive through this walkway. Sorry for the poor quality, Scot and I were more concerned with getting the car out then video taping. But we did it! This time no scratches either!

Today we would be driving up the St Lawrence River, over the Saguenay Fyord and to Les Bergeronnes where we were camping at Mer et Monde.

First stop outside of Quebec is the grocery store and stocked up on camping food, water and snacks.

The drive along the St. Lawrence River is just absolutely gorgeous and even the kids put the Kindles down to look out of the windows. The river turns into the Gulf of St. Lawrence along the way.

The last picture above is looking up into the Fjord. And on the other side of the Fjord is Tadoussac. A beautiful little town about 25 minutes from our destination! We are almost there!

We were lucky and didn't have to wait for the ferry at all. But even if, I don't think we would have to wait long as there are three ferry's operating at the same time. As soon as we parked the car on the ferry, we got out and started looking for Beluga whales. Unfortunately we didn't see any but the kids still thought the ferry ride was very exciting.

We arrived at our campsite at Mer et Monde and the first thing we did was explore. The campsite sits on a rocky cliff overlooking the St. Lawrence. There are small little tidal pools everywhere and just jumping from rock to rock was a lot of fun (and extremely dangerous as we found out THREE times later!)

Soon after we sat up our campsite we spotted our first Minke Whale. It was pretty awesome seeing AND hearing them for the first time.

Scot and I started dinner. The kids ate Tortellini and Cucumber Salad and we had these amazing Beef Rouladen which we picked up earlier that day at the grocery store. Finn and Jake finished their dinner before we did and left to explore some more while we finished. We didn't even finish eating when we heard this blood curdling scream, followed with a French lady trying to get our attention. We ran over the rocks (which wasn't the easiest) and found Finn in the water. The water up here is about 40 degrees. He was obviously cold and shocked but he screamed his head off because he thought the whales are coming to eat him. It was funny after we pulled him out, dried him off and warmed him by the fire. This was accident #1.

I wish I could remember the story Jake is telling us in the pictures above but he is a great story teller and I love how animated he is in these pictures.

We all decided it would be best to only explore from now on with an adult and stay close to the campsite for the rest of the evening. We made a fire to warm up Finn and we just loved sitting around it and watch for more whales. Jake did a little whittling with a stick he found and Finn "helped" Daddy with the fire.

This place is just so amazingly beautiful. I could sit forever in my little camp chair and look for whales. Unfortunately the mosquitos can be a bit much in the evening up there and we were all tired and decided to go to bed early.

The view from our tent was just incredible and worth driving almost 20 hours north east from Cincinnati!

Day 3 McGill's Go Up North - Battersea, Montreal & Quebec City

Woke up early to enjoy the cabin as long as possible. Unfortunately we only booked it for a night. It was only meant to be a stop over on our way to Quebec and never did we imagine loving it that much. Next time (and there will be a next time) we are staying much longer. So, got up early, made us coffee and waited for the boys to wake up.

As soon as Finn woke up, he got dressed and back outside to fish some more!

Like I said we had to leave early.... today's driving time was 8 hours with a stop in Montreal for a few hours. We had a long day ahead of us with a lot of driving and lots and lots of rain! I bought the first two books of Narnia on CD's for the boys (well and us) and we listened to it most of our way to Montreal and then Quebec.

We arrived in Montreal around noon. It was still raining and we quickly began the search for a restaurant with poutine. Which is hilarious because I think it would have been harder to find a restaurant that does not serve poutine. haha So, this was our first poutine experience and we all loved it. But how can you go wrong with French Fries, Gravy and Cheese?

A few years ago Scot and I have been to Montreal and I had an amazing Pistachio (if there is Pistachio on the menu, I will always order Pistachio!), I couldn't wait to have another one. Found a cute little Gelato place and we all had Gelato in the rain!

We walked around Montreal for a few hours and took in some of the sights of the city but we really were all eager to get to Quebec City. We spent most of our time at the fountain in front of the Notre Dame Basilica, did some people watching and let Finn get his energy out chasing pigeons.

It's just amazing how different these boys are. Jake was happily content sitting around with me and Finn was non stop in action.

We left Montreal, drove by McGill University to show the boys and stop by at the bookstore but the traffic around the university was so bad we decided to keep going. Stopped at McDonald's for some drinks and continued driving to Quebec City.

Quebec City is one of my favorite North American cities, mainly because it reminds me so much of home! We rented a sweet little Airbnb in the heart of the city. We were told that the Airbnb has parking in the courtyard but it is really tight for a small car but there is street parking available. Too bad that the day we arrive there was a large festival going on and there was NO street parking available. Dum dum dum... so we had to park in the courtyard with our SUV. Things went downhill when the older French neighbor later started yelling at us not to park in there, she didn't realize we had rented the space from her neighbor and our French is basically non existence to get that point across and then.... the side of my car got all scratched up because it is a parking space for a small car. So yeah no photos from that minor nightmare.

But we did make it to Quebec City. Just in time to enjoy a few hours in the evening walking around and taking everything in.

Jake and I went back to the Airbnb and Scot and Finn went to a concert at the festival nearby. We went to bad very, very exhausted but excited for the coming days!

 

Mom's Highlight of the Day: Pistachio Gelato

Jake's Highlight of the Day: arriving in Old Quebec.

Finn's Highlight of the Day: Quebec

Dad's Highlight of the Day: going to the festival at night with Finn