Charlie – who?

August 8, 2013 by Anu D. 1 Comment

“Let’s plan a trip to Charlevoix”

The metro station? The pink flip flops chuckled!

“Charlevoix – Its a place in northern Quebec” said my friend. Now I have lived in Montreal for two years and the only place I knew with that name was the small metro station on the green line. And it wasn’t even a big fancy metro station – a rather nondescript halt on the way home.

I opened up the map of Quebec to cross check if my fellow British Columbian friend had his facts right. But there it was – Charlevoix.  “What is so great about it?” I wanted to know. Apparently my friend’s boss who lived in Quebec fifteen years ago had been there sometime between the video cassette died and the floppy disc was born, and he had my friend sold on how beautiful the place was and that it should not be missed. We were flying to Montreal for my graduation ceremony and hence around it the trip was planned.

We boarded a plane in sunny Vancouver and landed in rainy Montreal (ironic I say!) The graduation ceremony was in the middle of the week so we planned to leave for Charlevoix early next morning itself. Together with a couple of friends we took off on our Quebecois expedition. The plan was to stop at Quebec city for a few hours, take in all the Canadian-Europe and then carry on until Charlevoix. So apart from some pee breaks and Tim stops there weren’t too many highlights along the way to Quebec city.

The first thing we did was visit the Quebec city tourist information booth, because believe it or not, we were traveling without reservations. We had tried to book accommodation online, but summer time is always very busy there so we could not find any place that could sleep 4 people for one night. Nonetheless, we had set out with the plan that we will figure out accommodation when we reach Charlevoix. And we lucked out too. The lady at the Tourist information center, besides being very beautiful, and very french, was very helpful too. She booked us a room in a motel which was incredibly cheap and could sleep 4 people.  Great! Accommodation – check! With that out of the way, we were free to explore the Quebec city now.

Quebec city is beautiful. The last time I visited Quebec city was during the snow festival – La Carnaval de Quebec and I remember freezing to death there…

For perspective’s sake…

Yes that was how I remembered Quebec city, but came summer it completely transformed into a different landscape.

And this is how I knew Quebec – very European, a lot of character and man-made beauty. Quebec city especially reminds one of the fairy tale town where the brute warrior comes looking for treasure and finds the princess instead. Very Don Quixote!

But there was a lot more to Quebec that I did not know, for what lay beyond Quebec city up north – was an incredible surprise.

Stay tuned for more….