Quebeckerin' Goodbye

Our final train ride to Quebec City, and we're seated next to some teenaged québécoises ladies. The swapping between English and French is more distracting than anything else: "Tu sais que I already bought it?"

I pay for my coffee with Canadian dimes, and the train attendantrix yells at me, “You think I like change?” She smiles and threatens to give me salt with my coffee, but we compromise on her giving me two heavy creams instead of the coffee whitener I wanted. She's a feeder.

I end up making my way through a third of City of Night, and somehow I’m committing myself to a one-man festival featuring Disillusioned Gays Finding Themselves Through Meaningless Sex in Urbania.

We hop off the train and after a sweaty walk that left a racing stripe across my chest, we check into Chateau Laurier. Our room is a boiler room from the Titanic, but we have a visual line of sight to the jumbotron of the concerts across the street. We again have not eaten anything that day again, so Yelp leads us towards a bistro called Le Hobbit. Based purely on the name itself, I was sold, but I was somewhat disappointed that it wasn’t a cozy nook in a grassy hill served by furry people about yay high. We’re told by the maître d’ that there is a forty-five minute wait for plebes with no reservations, and when we assent, she scoffs.

The time is spent well, and I pick up half a dozen French novels from the used bookstore for eight bucks. By the time my birch beer is swigged and we swag our way up the street, we’re seated at Chez Hobbit. For a decent price, we split duck leg confit and boudin noir.

As the shadows get longer in Vieux-Quebec, we wander down the cobbles towards La Korrigane. It’s empty when we enter, and I excitedly claim us a corner lookout, but we find that the locals are on the patio. Candlelit and tired, I have an excellent cream ale, something that gives a strong tea kick at the end, nothing of cream froth. I’m sad later that I missed out on Coeur du Pirate while we were in the lower town, but what can you do with insufficient information and opportunity costs. Little french-speakin' blond sprite spirit with a piano, and I am sold.



We head back like homosexual salmon against the throngs of concert folk going home, and we’re picking out potential mates. I don’t understand it, but there’s definitely a big part of me that wants the dark-haired orphans of the world. Points if they have cockney accents. Think chimney sweeps with stable income.

Poutine pops into my head at this appropriately late hour, and with a negligible amount of advocacy, we’re in Chez Alston, getting ready to feast on the emblematic dish of Quebec. Chris somehow manages to almost pick a fight with a large Tabarnackin’ bro, but we exit unharmed, vinegar and curdy gravy fries in hand.

Erik has the one fry he restricted himself to, but because no food must go to waste, he saves us from a dozen more. Who says chivalry is gone from this age and world?

Our second day in Quebec City starts off meeting a 400-year-old woman named Guillemette who guides us on a tour of Vieux-Quebec. UNESCO heritage site! We’re told how 40,000 cannonballs once destroyed 90% of the city, and about the French victories that involved rain, snow, and very little fighting. Lunch is with a little crazy pig, and I get quiche’d up before we wander the touristy outgrowths tumoring the old village square. Tire d'érable happens, though there are no pickles or coffee on hand.

We find the well-hidden hot tub on the roof before having a picnic worthy of Downton Abbey in the cemetery beside St. Michael’s. Tins of foie gras, pesto mustard, salted mackerel, pickled anchovies, olives, smoked meat, all on baguette. We toss a Montreal bagel to the punk barely has enough English to ask for something to eat before taking an epic nap at the hotel. Night wanders us towards different bars and in the deserted streets of Vieux-Quebec again. We clink cherry beer’d glasses to our last night in Canada at Sacrilege, which of course has a sweet patio out back.

Erik heads off to Grand Rapids early in the morning while Chris and I walk down to the water so I can pick up everything in maple flavor that I’m unclear I ever wanted. The little vendor lady outright lies to me when we have a brief conversation in French about whether beurre d’érable can be taken onto airplanes. Maple butter is what I was explicitly told to get in Quebec, and by the old gods, I was committed to picking up a family-sized tin of it. “But isn't it considered a liquid?” “It’ll be fine,” she murmured as she pocketed my loonies.

Chris and I split a enormous (and undoubtedly healthy) pie of curried lamb, a second basket of the best little strawberries I've ever had, and another two beers from Dieu du Ciel. The taxi driver is somehow okay with us paying him in a mix of currencies, lint, and prayer. The maple butter also magically survives two Canadian security checks, both because I decided to keep my birch beer bottle as a kombucha fizzer and it is an adequate distraction for both bag checkers. "This is not the maple butter you’re looking for."

We’re now an hour from SFO, and I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed with Dinga, and spooning some maple butter onto some co-op bread.