More province of Quebec

July 21 to 24, mostly sunny, hot and humid
The Hudson area near Montreal is, as I mentioned in the last chapter, very lovely.
 The reunion, held at the Hudson Yacht Club, with a few of John's cousins was really fun. We had picked up John's brother Art that morning from the airport and headed back to our camp for breakfast.
We headed to the HYC around 2pm and watched the youth sailing regatta that was happening that weekend, The Fruit Bowl. It was fun to watch the kids sail their boats and Art, being a sailor himself, told us what kind of boats they were sailing and a little bit about the boats attributes.
The reunion was fun with everyone pitching in with the food so it turned out to be quite a feast. In all there were 8 cousins, mostly with spouses and some with kids, so about 20 people. After we said goodbye to the cousins who had to drive a bit to go home, we stayed and watched the sunset.
The next morning we were up early to drive Art back to the airport. A short but very nice visit.
The same evening we drove into the heart of Montreal to go see a comedian at the Just for Laughs Festival. The navigation system got us there without a hitch. We had put the address of what we thought was a parking lot in the nav. When we got there, it was an underground garage, and fortunately it was tall enough for the truck. (the one I booked with the show tickets wasn't and good thing I thought to check). These cities are not made for big pickup trucks! We parked and left the garage only to walk in the wrong direction to the venue. Luckily we were quite early so after consulting google maps we got on the right track and found the venue and the theatre in the venue.
Along Rue St. Catharine for a couple of blocks the traffic was blocked off and the Just for Laughs Festival had set up vendors, games and food trucks. It was like a mini midway. We opted for dinner at a sports bar right across the street. After dinner we went back to the Place des Arts for the show and stood near the doors where it said the show would be. Strangely there were no other people. John went to the information booth and found out the act had been changed to another theatre. We were directed to the proper theatre and had a good laugh seeing Pete Correale. Returning to the underground parking, we found we did not have the "five digit code", which was printed on the parking voucher, to enter the garage. Sheesh, we are just not city savvy people....John located an intercom and summoned a parkade employee who kindly opened the door for us. Squeaking our way out of the parkade we reversed routed out of Montreal back to our campsite in the woods.
We golfed at the Harwood golf club the next day, which was conveniently located a very short walk right next to the campsite. It is a pretty, nine hole course and we walked it 18 holes. We were teamed up with a member, Mike, which is nice when you don't know a course.
The next day we met up with John's cousin Monique who gave us homemade maple syrup. It was very nice of her to plan the get together of the cousins and the syrup was the "icing on the cake"...
We drove to Beaumont, QC to the Camping Guilmette campground, about 40 kms to old Quebec City.
After setting up camp we planned out our trip to old Quebec City the next day. The next morning we hopped in the truck and put the address of at parking lot in Quebec City in the nav. We decided we would take the secondary highway rather than the TransCanada. When we got into the small city of Lévis, the nav routed us to the ferry. (just the day before I was monkeying around with the nav settings and added "ferries" to the list of ok things). This turned out to be a very good thing as the ferry from Levis had good, reasonably priced parking and the return ferry trip was 7$ each. The ferry landed right beneath the Hotel Frontenac which is exactly where you want to be. Voila!
Old Quebec City is an absolute gem! Even with all the tourists it is worth the visit. The historic buildings and great eateries and shops are wonderful! We walked all over the old city and to the Parliament building. John had his first poutine for lunch that day. They really lay the cheese on thick in Quebec! Taking the ferry back to Levis later that day was so nice, just knowing we didn't have all that extra driving we would have if we had driven right into QC. 😌
We spent another couple of days in Beaumont. One of those days we golfed at Golf St. Michel de Belchasse. It was another beautiful course and we were teamed up with a couple of fun guys from Lévis who golfed there often. It was another smoking hot and humid day and we were glad we had opted for a power cart.
Twice while at Camping Guilmette we walked down the steep path to the fleuve. The québécois call the St. Lawrence river here the fleuve because it is affected by the tides. It is really pretty to see all the farms across the river on Ile d' Orleans.
Time to hit the road for New Brunswick/Nouveau-Brunswick.

The beach at the Hudson Yacht Club

Razor sailboats at the Fruit bowl regatta.

Brightly coloured spinnaker sails

49ers

The cousins

Sunset at the HYC

The community centre in Hudson which also houses the Royal Canadian Legion

Homemade maple syrup from Monique

The view of the Hotel Frontenac from the Lévis ferry

The beautiful old buildings and the funicular up the hill

Old Quebec City

A shop window full of curiosities 

Hidden in between buildings!

Walking the narrow streets

An interesting sculpture 

A restaurant tucked away from the busy street

Part of the fortress wall

Interesting architecture 

Fontain de la Tourny is a monumental work presented to the City of Québec by La Maison Simons as a gift for the city's 400th anniversary.

Entertainment in a square

The Quebec Parliament building

An inukshuk tribute to Quebec's northern people

Pretty houses everywhere!

And churches!

A waterfall along the route

This house style is quite popular and I really like them.

Cute planters outside an ice cream shop

The quai at St. Michel, down the road from Beaumont

Rolling farmland and dairies galore! Milk and cheese still expensive....

A sunset over the Flueve St. Laurent

Ancient rocks along the river

John enjoying the sunset

The bottom of the rather steep path to the St. Lawrence river

Fleurs

Christmas in July at the Guilmette campsite. Many of the seasonal residents really dressed up their trailers.

We joined in with our blue lights. hahaha