Sunday 6th October

Today we departed Montreal to make our way to Quebec City, called that to differentiate it from the province Quebec, so it is formally Quebec City, Quebec. While Toronto and Ottawa were bi-lingual cities, as we move further east, the cities become more French only speaking, or as we discovered there are Francophones and Anglophones, so now the Francophones are well and truly out numbering the Anglophones. Not sure what the bi-ligual citizens are .. maybe biophones !?? All road signs are now in French only, menus in cafes and restaurants also.

Other things we have noticed in Canada ...

• petrol is a lot more expensive...(converted to AUS $)......$1.25 - $1.35 /L (compared to 0.70 /L in US)
• not as many 'trucks', the huge pickup trucks, as in US
• highway speeds are 100 kph (130 kph in US)
• Canadians are very friendly
• autumn leaves are aplenty - but that is more a timing thing
• road signage is not as comprehensive as in US
• drivers are a lot more sedate and do keep to the right hand lane when not overtaking
• but they do not move over for cars entering the highways
• their currency (similar to ours) is much more colourful and artistic than the greenbacks
• Wine is more expensive here, but there are plenty of Australian wines available

Canadians are very friendly - last night when in the supermarket buying some dinner, Tania asked a lady shopper for some advice on where to find some muesli bars. She offered lots of help taking us to the various aisles, but also giving us some tips of where to go on our drive through to Quebec City. During our chat she asked if we had tried poutine. This is essentially a traditional Quebec signature dish - while we had seen plenty of signs advertising the dish, we had not actually tried it. On our route was a town called Drummondville, and in Drummondville there is a restaurant that created the actual dish in 1964. How could we refuse ? So first stop today was Roy Julep in Drummondville to try out the original, authentic poutine dish !

So what is poutine ? For those not in the know, it is French fries, with cheese curds and topped with brown gravy !! We spiced ours up with some vegetables - capsicum, mushroom and onions. So we have now had the original, authentic poutine - glad we did it, but would not rush back for more !

Arrived at our accommodation in Quebec City around 1.30pm and on suggestion of the motel proprietor headed over to Orleans Island, the access via a bridge was very close to where we are staying. Tania was wanting to go to a sugar shack, and apparently there were a few on the island. Sugar shacks are where maple syrup is farmed and produced. Unfortunately the process occurs during late winter months of February and March, so we could not see any production actually happening, but we had the process explained to us in detail at Relais de Pins.

To farm the syrup, they literally tap the maple tree, pipe the liquid to a sugar shack, where it is cooked and boiled to various temperatures to produce various products, syrup, butter, hard grained suger etc. The tree must be more than 25 years old and they re-drill new tap holes each year. It takes 40 litres of maple water to produce 1 litre of syrup.

After our visit to the sugar shack, we drove a full circuit around the island, very picturesque, many apple, pear and other fruit orchids, cafes, galleries and farms. It was a really nice afternoon drive.