honeymoon

I’m starting this post on a train halfway between Quebec City and Montreal. Brooke and I are in Canada for our long-overdue honeymoon. Sadly, it’s winding down already, but we’ve had a good time. We got married in 2023, so our third wedding anniversary is coming up in just a couple months. But since I’m currently unemployed and have a lot more free time on my hands for traveling, we decided to finally have our honeymoon. Her aunt Gail generously funded it.

We started by flying from Denver to Montreal on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the flight was two hours late due to mechanical problems, so we got in later than we’d hoped.

The next morning, we wandered around Montreal’s art district some, getting Canadian cash to use for the rest of the trip and having breakfast and coffee at a recommended bagel shop.

Here’s me sitting in a strangely huge chair in an artsy park

It took some searching, but we finally found this reflective globe

Art

Then we took the train from Montreal up the St. Lawrence River valley to Quebec.

Brooke is happy to be on a train

It’s about a 3.5 hour train ride, and afterward we needed to get some exercise, but we had to check in to our hotel first. The weather had turned cold and windy in Quebec, much different than we had hoped for our honeymoon. So rather than walking with our bags up the steep narrow streets to our hotel, we took a Lyft, which was a lot easier.

We stayed three nights at the most famous hotel in Quebec, and one of the most photographed hotels in the world. That’s the Hotel Frontenac, which sits at the highest point of Quebec City, overlooking the river and the old town stretching out in all directions below.

I marked up this marketing photo to circle the windows in the room where we stayed

That first night we wandered around the old town, descending the Break Neck Stairs down into one part of the old town. But because it was late, many shops were closed. The only one that pulled us in was the goat milk shop where we got some soft cheese, a charcuterie kit, some crackers, and a small sample of goat milk soft service ice cream. We returned to the top of the steep hill via the famed funicular, which is a motorized glass room that goes up and down on a rail.

Brooke on the funicular

The next day, Thursday, we enjoyed the famous buffet breakfast in the hotel, and then did more sightseeing and shopping and lots of walking. We did a self-paced audio tour of the old town, and learned a bunch of the history of the area. Somewhere along the way we had to stop at a historic cafe for a sandwich, soup, and poutine.

We didn’t eat here, but apparently this is the oldest restaurant in Quebec City

Here I am in front of Quebec City Hall

This was once a boarding school. Maybe it still is. I can’t remember for sure.

This giant blue sculpture is the Anxiyeti

That night we walked to the Nordic spa to soak in the hot pools. Most of the walk was just fine, up and down some easy hills as we crossed the Plains of Abraham. But at the end we had to descend from the top level of the city to the lower level where the river is. It was the longest staircase I’ve ever been on or even seen. It was so long my thighs and hips were sore just from walking down the stairs. There’s no way I could’ve made it back up that staircase. And then about 2/3 of the way down I started getting dizzy. All the stairs started blurring into one, which made me nervous I was going to trip and tumble down hundreds of feet to my death. That part sucked. But I eventually made it and the hot pools at the spa made my legs feel much better. We took a Lyft back to the hotel.

Looking back at the bottom section of the incredibly long staircase

From the parking lot at the spa the staircase of doom is all lit up

On Friday our main goal was to walk to the art museum (Musee des beaux artes) and spend a couple hours there. Getting out of the tourist zone, we found a more typical cafe for brunch. Surprisingly we had no poutine there.

The museum normally has three buildings, but two of them are currently closed for construction. So they’ve moved some of the best stuff from the other buildings into one exhibit hall in the remaining building. We got quite a mix of styles of art, including an exhibit of hyperrealism, a permanent exhibit of Inuit art, and an exhibit of things inspired by Expo67, the world’s fair in Montreal in 1967.

Native carving (sorry for the glare)

The wooden Mercedes

The native artists make a lot of owls

On the walk back to the hotel, we explored a shopping center with lots of different food shops and a supermarket. There we loaded up on a few things to take back to our hotel to turn the leftovers of our goat cheese snack into a full meal so we could skip another expensive meal in the hotel.

I feel like a trip isn’t really a luxury unless you order room service breakfast to enjoy in bed. So on the final night in Quebec, I put in an order for the next morning. It was a wonderful feast. I ordered us each a latte, and was surprised with the size. They weren’t served in a coffee cup. Not even a big coffee cup. They both arrived in a bowl. Brooke thought that was totally reasonable, but it sure seemed like a lot of coffee to me, or at least a whole lotta milk.

Anyhow, we eventually finished all the breakfast, packed up our things, and checked out. We considered walking to the train station, back down the steep narrow streets, but decided to take a taxi instead. The train back to Montreal was just like the one to Quebec but in reverse. We saw lots of forests, several rivers, and a lot of farms. Brooke says it looks just like upstate New York to her.

The train arrived just a little late, and finding our way to the hotel was super cool. Montreal has an entire underground city that connects train stations, metro stations, commercial buildings, apartment complexes, shopping centers, and many hotels. I read that 500,000 people use at least some part of the underground city every day. Because of this web of underground connections, we could just walk from the train station to the basement of the hotel building and take an elevator up to check in, without ever being exposed to the weather. I’m sure it’s great for the snowy Canadian winters, but even in the spring it’s nice because we didn’t have to bundle up to walk to the hotel.

The original plan was that the next morning - Sunday - I’d fly back to Denver by way of Chicago, and Brooke would take the Amtrak Adirondack train from Montreal into New York to visit her aunt for a few days. But Brooke asked me to change plans and come to New York with her. So I did.