Une autre anniversaire...

After all of the anniversaries yesterday, I realized there was one more fun one I didn't mention.  Twenty-three years ago right now, I was in Quebec City on a trip that was literally a dream come true.

When I was in high school, I was obsessed with French Canada.  It was mostly a hockey thing, but I loved speaking French and wanted nothing more than to go to Quebec.  During my senior year of high school, the National Honor Society was trying to think of a trip to take (after a New York City trip a couple years earlier that caused some problems), and a French teacher shared that they were looking for more people for that year's trip for the advanced level French classes.  Here was the opportunity I was waiting for--I was going to get to go to Quebec!

We left on the Friday before MLK Day, and drove overnight.  It was one of the worst nights of my life, between kids wanting to watch movies until 3am and not being able to sleep in a bus seat.  When I finally grabbed a couple hours of sleep, I woke up to the scene of early morning Montreal passing me by.  It was so cool to see French everywhere and see the beautiful city skyline.  I was in awe!

When we got to Quebec City a couple hours later, we immediately went on a walking tour of Old Quebec.  It was freezing!  But the city was completely enchanting!

A lot of pictures ended up with fluffy gloves blocking the lens!

Part of the walled section of the city

The view from the Plains of Abraham was gorgeous. There was once a battle here in the French and Indian War.

We got to walk through the Chateau Frontenac, and it was gorgeous.  I wish I had pictures, but I seem to have missed a lot on this trip!

In this row of shops was an "adult" shop, and it got quite the bunch of giggles from a crew of high school kids!

The city was on two levels, and you had two options to make the shift.  Either take the Funiculaire...

...or L'Escalier Casse Cou (Breakneck Steps)...

The streets were so cute.  We stopped in little shops and ate chocolate croissants at a café.

It's sort of fuzzy now, but I think that was the night we went to an Italian restaurant in the city that let us grill our own garlic bread, and then we went to an Imax movie.  It got a little crazy because one kid fell asleep and had his face painted with makeup.  He had no idea and ended up totally embarrassed.  It led to some unfortunate shenanigans later in the trip when he tried to save face by going out and getting drunk, but it was funny at the time.  That night I enjoyed watching my favorite player, Pierre Turgeon, playing for the Montreal Canadiens on the French Canadian version of Hockey Night in Canada...and then I fell dead asleep after a crazy day!

On Sunday we stopped at the Ste-Anne-de-Beaupre shrine, which was so beautiful.  I wish the inside pics would have turned out, because there were mosaics everywhere.

We also stopped a little sugar shack, and I was obsessed with this hockey wall!

We spent most of the day at an amazing snow park going tubing.  It was below zero cold, and with multiple layers to keep warm, it was so much fun!  I'd never seen a place that tows you up the hill, and the runs were huge and exhilarating!  We even went on a tube the size of a white water raft, and it was amazing!

That night we went to a wonderful dinner at a sugar shack that based most of the dinner on maple syrup!  We were encouraged to put it on everything!  After dinner we went on a sleigh ride and ate maple taffy fresh out of a trough of snow.  It was so good!

I loved Quebec so much and hated to leave.  But Monday morning, it was time to go.  This was a view from our hotel that morning.

We stopped at a mall on our way out of town, and my favorite memories from there were getting another chocolate croissant, buying a stuffed Kermit from McDonald's, which was selling NHL-themed Muppets at the time, and finding a La Presse newspaper in the stairway with an article about one of my favorite hockey players at the time--and being able to read it!  It was a very long trip home, but it was the trip of a lifetime for 17-year-old me.  It took me three years to get back, that time to Montreal during spring break, and 13 years after that to go back as a family of three.  I still love it there and am sort of hoping we can make a trip there when we travel to Watertown this summer.  Time to make more Quebec memories, I think!

I got nostalgic this morning because the CD in my car was the Canadian techno CD I listened to non-stop at the time, including on those very long bus rides.  And now that all my photos have been scanned, I figured it might be fun to share.  Thanks for bearing with me on a little trip down memory lane!  See, January isn't all bad!