Bonjour tu vous

Sticking to our usual way of doing things, we could find our way around without a map so it's off to the next city and todays journey was to "Quebec".

We woke to our first day of grey and rain, but as it's been so long since we have seen any we were not complaining, if anything we quite enjoyed the 15 minute walk to the station. The train left Montreal at 8.30 and there were only 4 people in our carriage so the service was fab, unfortunately they use Qantas catering and the scrambled eggs were not. LOL.

This is as far french as we go on the trip (I think) and while it is not a problem we have encountered people that do NOT speak any English even here in the hotel. The hotel is a quaint petite hotel in the old quarter and was originally two houses. This part of the street has been blocked to traffic so is full of restaurants which we cant afford LOL but is very quiet becuse of no traffic and busy with walking tourists and artists flogging their wares.

We are over the road from the "Fairmont" which like most of the Fairmonts across Canada, was built by the Canadian Railway back when money was no object.

As you can see it's very impressive, nothing like ours LOL.

As our breaky on the train was so miserable it was off to Cafe de Paris for lunch and a quick snack of carrot soup and veal cannelloni with lots of crusty bread.

The hotel has been wonderful to us as I don't think they get too many Aussies stopping in and we must be a welcome change from the hordes south of the border LOL. 

Our first request was "Please direct us to a laundry as we are desperate" "no no give it to moi" was the reply and off they went with our laundry and it was all apart of the service - NO CHARGE !!!!!  So we will toss them $20 when it comes back in the morning. When you consider that in Montreal and Toronto it was cheaper to buy new stuff than do hotel laundering, then this attitude is amazing. 

So far everyone we have spoken to has been great. The people who run the bottle shop were very helpful and knowledgeable, the restaurant was good and we have been given directions to a tapas bar tonight which is just outside the old quarter so prices are $15 a main instead of $39. 

Arty I tried to call you today and left a message on your answering machine. Give us a call or I will try again tonight (Sunday)