One week in!

I can’t believe I have been in Quebec City for an entire week!  Though I am blogging on Friday, I have to catch up on a few days of events.

There are two words to describe yesterday:

Harry Potter.

Thursday we decided it was time to do laundry.  I packed plenty, but we both had towels we wanted to wash.  I know that is just almost too exciting to absorb, but anyway, I studied while at the lavoir, since I knew we wouldn’t have time to study that night.  We also knew we’d be out of touch with things on Sunday since we’re going to Montreal, so we wanted to make sure we had everything good to go.

Ok enough of the boring stuff.  Let’s just cut to the chase.  Dinner last night wasn’t fantastic, but we didn’t really mind.  We made it to the theater without a hitch!  One bus transfer and a little bit of waiting and bam, there we were!  

Aren't we cute?

We arrived at the Cineplex around 9 so that we would have plenty of time in case something happened on the way there.  I really wanted to go check out the dollar store and the Wal Mart, but this is what we saw when we arrived.

Needless to say, we got in line.  And waited.  For two hours.  The groups in front of and behind us were entertaining, at least, so we listened to a lot of French in those two hours!  At 11:30 they let us into the theater, and the two hours and fifteen minutes of Harry Potter in English was absolutely fantastic!  It is just so neat to me that this series has truly been a part of my childhood.  Anna and I reminisced about all of the midnight premiers and humungo amounts of Accelerated Readers points we earned by reading the books in elementary school.  I will never forget sitting in Mrs. Sholar’s fourth grade class reading my Harry Potter books!  And there we were about to watch the final installment of the movies.  It was just superb.  I mean yeah they left out lots of stuff, but I didn’t care to sit there for 4 hours anyway! 

The movie seemed to go by so quickly, and there was a taxi waiting for us right outside when we left!  This was a huge blessing; I was not fired up about standing around at 2:30AM waiting for a taxi in a French speaking country.  So far Quebec has seemed very safe, but still.  You know me and taking risks.  The taxi driver didn’t speak too much English, so that was another opportunity for me to practice my skills!  We made it back to the hotel and quickly called it a night.

We had a test this morning, which wasn’t too bad.  The lack of sleep made things a bit more uncomfortable, but it was all totally worth it.  We napped and didn’t even feel like eating lunch.  This afternoon we rode the ferry across the river to get a great view of Le Chateau Frontenac.  We got cute group pictures and enjoyed a different view of the city.  Here are some snapshots!

This is our whole group minus our teacher and Max (who took the picture!).

Then Anna and I went to the bus station to make sure we could get tickets to go to Montreal on Sunday.  We are so excited!  The tickets were not terribly expensive, and we plan to make a whole day out of it, since it’s a 3-hour bus ride.  But I mean, when in Rome, right?

This is the old train station.  It is right next to the bus station.

On the way back we stopped at this great farmer’s market.  We are definitely going back!  They had all sorts of homemade food, fresh meat and fish, and every kind of maple syrup and jelly you could ever want!

Lots of choices!

Fresh goodies!

Emily's favorite... cheese (miss you!)

"Market of the Old Port" and "Eat strawberries here!" (I wanted some.)

Dinner was yummy (surprise), and now we are at the hotel trying not to fall asleep.  An Oreo McFlurry is just sounding too delicious right now, so we might get over our “Harry Potter Hangover” to go get one!  Tomorrow we take a guided tour of the city, and Sunday is Montreal, so I will try to get another post in before our venture west!

Thanks for reading this and keeping up with my travels; it is fun to be able to share my stories and pictures with everyone!

HRC