Our first stop was Wendat, a Huron community towards the north end of Quebec City. We programmed our GPS (really do have to name her - any ideas?) for the community of Wendat and she took us to the tribal office. From there, we were directed to Onhoua Chetekbe, a recreated traditional Huron Village site. In reality, it was was an interactive museum of the life and history of the Wendat Huron People. It was a very interesting display, focusing mainly on the Huron but with a few displays of Indigenous peoples across Canada. Our guide is Wendat from the Turtle clan. She was bubbly with a good sense of humour. We had thought that our english speaking group would be quite small, but soon realized that other language speakers seemed to have english as their second language. We had people from Germany, Spain, Russia, and Great Britain in our group.
After we left the site, we drove to Kouba Falls which was nearby. There was a short walk to the falls, which were small but quite pretty.
We had heard about Iles d'Orleans, an island just off Quebec City, so thought we would check it out. We had heard that there were a number of artisan shops there. The island is connected to the mainland by one main bridge. Arriving on the island, we stopped at the tourist information store and chatted with a delightful gentleman whos explained the island to us, and told us some of the best things to see. Tour book in hand, we headed out. The island is 4 km wide and I forget how many km long. All of the development is at the edge of the island, with one road circling the circumference. The road is quite narrow with development on either side. The island appears to be primarily agricultural as we saw many small farms, growing mainly strawberries, but we also saw corn, blueberries and one small patch of wheat. There are six small villages on the island, which all seem to run into each other. True to promise, there were lots of artisan shops, fruit stands, and other agricultural farmgate products!! There went our day!
It was after 6pm when we left the island, so we thought we would look for a restaurant and then check in to our hotel. With no luck - for some reason restaurants here are hard to identify - we checked in and then asked the clerk where we could find a restaurant. She said 15 minutes down the road in the next community there were lots. WELL! We drove ...way more than 15 minutes. Our GPS let us down. Everywhere she said there was a restaurant, there wasn't. Google maps was not much better. We headed back to Boischatel and into the community. I finally saw a sign I recognized as a restaurant pointing to an IGA, but we headed in anyway, only to find there actually was a restaurant there, but it was closed. By now it was way after seven. Screwing up my courage, I approached a young woman sitting at a table and asked in my best French is she spoke english. I must have a terrible accent because she didn't understand. I perservered and she finally caught on to what I was saying, but said she only spoke a little. However, her friend was in the IGA and she said she spoke good english. She did. Soon we were on our way into the town, google maps open to where the girls had given us direction and soon arrived at the restaurant. We were very hungry by then. The waitress was very friendly, but the service was very slow. The food, however, made up for it.
We got back to our hotel around 930pm. We have found the people of Quebec to be very friendly and very willing to help where they can. In most of the stores etc, most speak english and are very quick to switch to english. Today was a day of getting lost, getting found again, and trying to find things that weren't wher we expected them to be. But all in all, it was a great and fun day.
It is now almost 1030pm and bed is beckoning! Nite all.
Hotel: EconoLodge
Temp: Hot and sunny -above 30c
Distance: 188Km - mostly trying to find a restaurant
Mileage - 10.9L/100k
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