Do I have plans for tomorrow?
Yes. I’ll pick you up at 9
I’m quite used to Amras electing himself as my tour guide as of late. He’s been to a lot of the ports I haven’t, and while I could easily drag him around most of Asia and New Zealand…when we’re running along the East Coast or in Europe, I hand all navigational reigns for my port day over to him. And I make very sure to wear good walking shoes, as it inevitably ends up involving climbing many many stairs.
Which also proved the case in Quebec City. The stairs up to the old town weren’t quite as bad as the massive staircase that we climbed in Barcelona, but they came close. And here I thought I was in shape. Perhaps not so much! But the view from the top is worth it, the place feels like a little slice of Europe dropped into the middle of Canada. Only minus the spaghetti. I usually bear a certain amount of discontent towards the refusal of most of Quebec to acknowledge that Canada is in fact a bilingual country (it comes from the fact that on the west coast we are forced to learn French for the first 11 years of our schooling, but Quebec does not have the same insistence in teaching English – in short, don’t get me started) but it’s kind of hard to maintain that distaste when you’re wandering through a street that’s essentially an arts market and all you can hear around you is French and it somehow…seems to fit.
I used to know French once, well, a cobbled together broken version. It’s all locked somewhere in the back of my mind, the door to it long rusted shut by time. I should really find the mental key and refresh what little skill I had one of these days….but knowing where to start is always the problem. For now all I know how to say is the typical “do you speak English”.
Aaanyway….
Wandering and window-shopping our way through the twisted city streets and eventually into modern downtown I was lucky not to buy anything (though there was a pair of shoes I positively salivated over…but they were rather WAY out of my price range), we eventually settled down for lunch. I eat well on contracts that feature a lot of ports, though it often doesn’t do great things for my paycheque to eat ashore all the time, it works out better for my health in the long run.
By the time we headed back to the ship it had started to drizzle, then it started to do a little bit more than drizzle. Far from torrential, I mean I’m used to west coast rain which can sometimes get so thick you can’t see your hand in front of your face. For me this was nothing that my jean jacket couldn’t handle. But if you were out without a coat? Yeah, you were going to get soaked. And our search for an umbrella proved fruitless, so eventually you just have to laugh it off…because by that point you’re already wet enough that an umbrella would be useless anyway…
But sometimes getting caught in the rain really isn’t so bad….