{"id":3212,"date":"2014-07-17T09:52:34","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T16:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=3212"},"modified":"2014-07-31T13:16:34","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T20:16:34","slug":"gettin-caught-in-the-rain-quebec-city-quebec-07132014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=3212","title":{"rendered":"Gettin\u2019 Caught In the Rain \u2013 Quebec City, Quebec \u2013 [07\/13\/2014]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"woman<\/a>Do I have plans for tomorrow?
\nYes. I\u2019ll pick you up at 9<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m quite used to Amras electing himself as my tour guide as of late. He\u2019s been to a lot of the ports I haven\u2019t, and while I could easily drag him around most of Asia and New Zealand\u2026when we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

Which also proved the case in Quebec City. The stairs up to the old town weren\u2019t quite as bad as the massive staircase that we climbed in Barcelona, but they came close. And here I thought I was <\/em>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 \u2013 in short, don\u2019t get me started) but it\u2019s kind of hard to maintain that distaste when you\u2019re wandering through a street that\u2019s essentially an arts market and all you can hear around you is French and it somehow\u2026seems to fit.<\/p>\n

I used to know French once, well, a cobbled together broken version. It\u2019s 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\u2026.but knowing where to start is always the problem. For now all I know how to say is the typical \u201cdo you speak English\u201d.<\/p>\n

Aaanyway\u2026.<\/p>\n

Wandering and window-shopping our way through the twisted city streets and eventually into modern downtown I was lucky not<\/em> to buy anything (though there was a pair of shoes I positively salivated over\u2026but 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\u2019t do great things for my paycheque to eat ashore all the time, it works out better for my health in the long run.<\/p>\n

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\u2019m used to west coast rain which can sometimes get so thick you can\u2019t see your hand in front of your face. For me this was nothing that my jean jacket couldn\u2019t 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\u2026because by that point you\u2019re already wet enough that an umbrella would be useless anyway\u2026<\/p>\n

But sometimes getting caught in the rain really isn\u2019t so bad\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do I have plans for tomorrow? Yes. I\u2019ll pick you up at 9 I\u2019m quite used to Amras electing himself as my tour guide as of late. He\u2019s been to a lot of the ports I haven\u2019t, and while I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[77,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-east-coast-adventures-2014","category-summer-contracts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-PO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3215,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212\/revisions\/3215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}