Quebec City - Part Deux

We love dining al fresco...and that's including breakfast. Awake to a stunningly beautiful day...cook bacon on the grill, make fresh wild blueberry pancakes inside...and have a picnic dejeuner. These Canadian blueberries are like the ones in Maine...very, very small and very, very sweet.

Our plan is to have a big breakfast, skip lunch and have an early dinner, then head to a free concert on the dock that is part of the 400th anniversary celebration. That will be followed by a slide show projected on huge refinery containers about Quebec history.

Catch the ferry, drive through Battefield Parkland (which is gorgeous) and down Grande Allee, Quebec's version of the Champs E'lysee. It's very pretty and very hip...crammed with sidewalk cafes and nightclubs. We will return later.

Notre Dame in Old Quebec is not of the scale of its namesake, but it glitters with gold everywhere. We enter during a celebration of parents and children all applauding enthusiastically. Find out it is some sort of school award ceremony.

We return to the one store I had scouted out yesterday for a serious visit...Boutique De Noel De Quebec on Rue De Buade. I am a serious Christmas freak and have carefully acquired a very large number of Victorian style ornaments. They are not that easy to find anymore, but here I hit the motherlode! I find some exquisite additions for the collection and can't wait to see them on this year's tree.

Comes 4 p.m. and we decide, we need a nibble and go back to Grande Allee to one of the chic little cafes. We choose Cosmos and it's terrific. Rather chi-chi food. The paninis sound too good to pass up, though they're more than we want to eat. But whatever...Rick has a chicken, mango, avocado, accompanied by frites....I order smoked trout with chevre with a couscous salad side. We can only make it through about half the food...have them package the leftovers and know we are toast for filling 3 hours until the concert and 5 hours before the light show. Sometimes you just can't do it all. We take the ferry back.