Parochial Town
Well, I have returned from Quebec without major incident. Well, of the fatal kind anyway.
The trip there was pretty nice, we were a bit rushed out of the Mobile airport, but the rest of the trip went along smoothly. On our way through the Newark, New Jersey airport I was able to find the fifth Harry Potter book, but since I was so amazingly tired I didn't actually start it until later. We had a three-hour lay over in the Newark airport (which we knew about ahead of time) and the flight to Quebec was only about an hour and a half.
Prior to leaving my dad had read from the guidebook that Quebec had strict officials who discouraged the use of English words on signs and so on. When we arrived it became increasingly evident that this was nowhere near as strict as the book said. There were plenty of English signs, and amusingly one of the first things we spotted on our drive to the center of Quebec City was a Wal*Mart, although it wasn't open yet.
The outer city was very normal looking except for the abundance of bronze statues decorating the lawns of large buildings. The inner city, however, was a different story. It felt a bit like Paris except much more condensed. A myriad of cafes and gift shops bearing plenty of ridiculous stuff, as well as a good number of impressive stone buildings with the obligatory copper roofs. The largest of the latter was Chateau Frontenac, which was a gigantic castle built in the 1800s. Not too old, and of course it was a hotel from the second it was built, but still grandiose and a good bit of eye candy.
Most of the vacation was spent walking around the city getting different angles of the pretty buildings and eating. Generally I liked Quebec better than Paris...less people...english subtitles. Most of the people we met could speak English to a degree, some better than others.
I'd say the only problem I had with the vacation was my mom never seemed to be satisfied, especially towards the last few days. It really started to get on my nerves. My brain is clouded, I can't really think of the details, but in one instance I had to take a walk around the restaurant and pray a bit to calm myself. It really wasn't that bad, though.
The plane trip back was the real doozy, however. The plane out of Quebec was about an hour late, causing us to have to rebook the rest of our flights. Because of that we had to wait for about two hours in Detroit (which actually was a very nice airport, I had some great Japanese food). Once we finally got to Memphis we found out that our flight to Mobile had been cancelled due to bad weather. When we rebooked, it put us on the next day, so we had to stay the night in Memphis. At first I was pretty angry, wanting to be at home pretty badly, but it ended up being ok. My brother and I were able to get room service for breakfast and I played Kirby 64 on the pay-per-view game thingie.
There definitley was more than that but I'm very tired and I'll probably remember enough of it anyway.
Night.
The trip there was pretty nice, we were a bit rushed out of the Mobile airport, but the rest of the trip went along smoothly. On our way through the Newark, New Jersey airport I was able to find the fifth Harry Potter book, but since I was so amazingly tired I didn't actually start it until later. We had a three-hour lay over in the Newark airport (which we knew about ahead of time) and the flight to Quebec was only about an hour and a half.
Prior to leaving my dad had read from the guidebook that Quebec had strict officials who discouraged the use of English words on signs and so on. When we arrived it became increasingly evident that this was nowhere near as strict as the book said. There were plenty of English signs, and amusingly one of the first things we spotted on our drive to the center of Quebec City was a Wal*Mart, although it wasn't open yet.
The outer city was very normal looking except for the abundance of bronze statues decorating the lawns of large buildings. The inner city, however, was a different story. It felt a bit like Paris except much more condensed. A myriad of cafes and gift shops bearing plenty of ridiculous stuff, as well as a good number of impressive stone buildings with the obligatory copper roofs. The largest of the latter was Chateau Frontenac, which was a gigantic castle built in the 1800s. Not too old, and of course it was a hotel from the second it was built, but still grandiose and a good bit of eye candy.
Most of the vacation was spent walking around the city getting different angles of the pretty buildings and eating. Generally I liked Quebec better than Paris...less people...english subtitles. Most of the people we met could speak English to a degree, some better than others.
I'd say the only problem I had with the vacation was my mom never seemed to be satisfied, especially towards the last few days. It really started to get on my nerves. My brain is clouded, I can't really think of the details, but in one instance I had to take a walk around the restaurant and pray a bit to calm myself. It really wasn't that bad, though.
The plane trip back was the real doozy, however. The plane out of Quebec was about an hour late, causing us to have to rebook the rest of our flights. Because of that we had to wait for about two hours in Detroit (which actually was a very nice airport, I had some great Japanese food). Once we finally got to Memphis we found out that our flight to Mobile had been cancelled due to bad weather. When we rebooked, it put us on the next day, so we had to stay the night in Memphis. At first I was pretty angry, wanting to be at home pretty badly, but it ended up being ok. My brother and I were able to get room service for breakfast and I played Kirby 64 on the pay-per-view game thingie.
There definitley was more than that but I'm very tired and I'll probably remember enough of it anyway.
Night.