A pleasant, three hour train trip got me to Quebec, the oldest city in Canada. Founded in 1608, the city is tactically positioned on a large cliff guarding the entrance to the St Lawrence river. Although the city now sprawls down the hill to accommodate 500,000 people, the European styled old town remains, complete with cobblestone streets and a city wall.
Just for a change, I arrived right in the middle of a music festival. The Quebec Summer Festival had 3 practically free open air stages and an impressive international line up including Michael Franti, Xavier Rudd and an amusing rock opera. Once again the people were friendly and the atmosphere was great.
In another fortunate coincidence, Griff was attending a Banach Algebra conference in Quebec the very same week. Don’t even bother asking what Banach Algebra is - unless you’ve got a postgraduate pure maths degree and a special interest in infinite dimensioned vector spaces. One of the members of the group jokingly suggested that one well placed bomb would all but remove Banach Spaces from the pool of human knowledge. I’m pretty sure no one would notice...
A liberation interpretation of ‘partners welcome’ saw me holding hands with Griff to join the group on a whale watching excursion. I’ve never really seen the appeal of whale watching but the scenery and buffet dinner made the day worthwhile. After being around ‘normal’ people for a couple of months, I was glad to be back in my element - obscure internet references and maths puzzles abounded. Matt (my musical twin) and Chris, both from Ottawa, were particularly good value.
The weather was very wet for my final couple of days in Canada so I stuck mostly to indoor activities, sampling a couple of nice restaurants, touring the parliament building and having a few beers with Matt, Chris and some friends from the hostel. I shared a cab to the airport with a friendly Swedish couple who offered me some useful advice about travelling in their country. Next stop, New York! Or at least that was the plan...
3 comments:
Clever last sentence, Wes/Chris ;-)
Thanks for the mail. I'm still suffering from the jetlag: I stay up VERY late at night (so unlike me, isn't it?) and get up way too late (can't call it morning anymore)!! So, the weekend is not the best help to overcome the jetlag, because I went clubbing last night and will do the same tonight :-)
Hope you'll enjoy the trip to the north of Sweden. Should be really cool with the 22 hours of bright daylight. :D
Kerstin
So speaking of puzzles, i have a little brain teaser for you...
You come to a crossroad and need to find out which way takes you to your destination.There 3 people at the crossroads of which you can ask 2 questions (to individuals). 1 person always lies, 1 person always tells the truth and 1 person sometimes tells the truth and you don't know who is who. How can you find which is the correct road to your destination?
I now pronounce you Griff and Michael.
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