[ July 2019 ] Because the tour to Il d’Orleans in the suburbs of Quebec City in Canada did not start until afternoon, we went out to see the Citadel in the city in the morning.
It was a very hot day.
In the Upper Town where we could look over the river, there was a promenade and at the end of it, there was a staircase.
We had thought this was the entrance to the Citadel, so we started climbing up.
We walked on and on but could not enter the Citadel.
In fact, it was the walking path surrounding the Citadel and in the end we came out to a park from where we could see our hotel.
By the way, a music festival started on the day before in Quebec City.
This festival is called ‘Quebec City Summer Festival’ which lasts 11 days every year around this time of the year and the bands of various kinds of music play in several venues.
According to our guides, people can see the concerts of world top level musicians and the tickets are reasonably priced.
In the past, Paul McCartney, Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder played here.
We had not done any homework, so we could not see anything this time, but according to the programme, Level42 played this year.
While we were walking, we came across one of the venues and we had to detoured around it.
Finally we found the entrance of the Citadel Museum, but by the time, it was nearly the time to go for the tour, so we had to give it up.
This time the tour guide and the driver was a man called Peter who had the nice and easygoing manner.
He explained the history of Quebec City at the beginning of the tour driving around the city.
The first European who came here was a Frenchman called Jacques Cartier and at that time he was trying to reach South East Asia.
Instead he reached here in 1535 and at first it seemed that he had believed that this was South East Asia.
He could not find any diamond or gold which was expected by the French king, but he got friendly with the native people and took two sons of the native Chief back to France.
But the king did not like that, so he came back here and found something shiny on the hill assuming it was gold, but it was not.
His visit finished here and after more than 70 years since his first visit, another Frenchman called Samuel de Champlain started building the city in 1608.
He noticed that Lawrence River was narrow at this point and there was a cliff here, so he thought it would be a good place to control the boats and that was why he decided to settle here.
Our tour bus went away from the city centre while we were listening to the history and eventually we crossed the bridge to get to the island, our destination.
Ile d’Orleans had been completely isolated until this bridge was built in 1935 apparently.
