Quebec City, Tabarnac

My vacation in Canada's drawing near to its end already. It's a little colder here than I remembered it being, and I'm glad enough to be ducking out before Winter draws its big ugly face around the corner and breathes icy death upon Montreal. The American border might as well be The Wall (you know what I mean if you're a big enough dork.)

 And although I missed my beloved Zombie Walk this year, I did get a chance to go even further north (I know, right? I'm an idiot, shoot me,) to Quebec City. I often say Montreal has history, but Quebec is even more ancient than my hometown. This is where North America as we know it began. We're talking 16th century.
Accompanied by old friends of mine, we rented a car and made the trip in three hours and spent a good day there, basking in the sights I hadn't seen in...six, seven years now? Shit.

Hell, you'd be tempted too.

Forget what you know about North America's distinction from Europe. It all blends in here as you go down into Old Quebec, where new structures are built shouldering truly ancient ones, dating from the colonial days. Quebec is a city of battlements and fortifications, and castles and canons, but also damnable cold where you might get your tongue stuck to poles, and old men with thick old accents. It might be relatively close to Montreal, but hell is it different here. Good luck using your English anywhere, we're in deep French territory here! Shit, good luck using your European French. We're in
DEEP French territory here.
 Walking around Old Quebec inevitably ends you up in the Plains of Abraham, where American history was written as, in a nutshell, the English toppled the French. Having been occupied by both, you can sort of get why the province of Quebec holds both languages.
 Regardless of your interest in history, it's a nice place to take a walk, and gives you a nice view of the Saint-Lawrence river and the other side of the riverbank, and that's good.

On the side, if you're anywhere near Quebec, or even in most parts of Canada if you look hard enough, you can try out a beaver tail, one of the local desserts. Don't worry your vegetarian ass, it's actually just fried dough topped with different condiments like chocolate spread or cinnamon. It's worth a try - if you aren't counting calories. It'd been at least two years since I last had one of these, seeing as I missed out during my last trip.


 That aside, the Montmorency Falls are only a 20 minute ride away and are definitely worth the stop. They're actually higher than Niagara's, and the tallest in the province, which might not seem like a big deal until you realize that Quebec by itself is almost four times the size of Japan. At night the falls are illuminated by bright lights projected upon the surface of the falling water.

Is that a camera you have pointed so close to my face?

 I really skimmed the surface on this one. If I were living in Quebec city rather than Tokyo I could easily write an article about each of the things I touched upon here, but that'll have to do for now. Quebec's worth a visit, folks. If you ever do, don't forget to greet people by saying "tabarnac," loud and proud. All the locals will be so impressed!