The Plains of Abraham and the Citadel

 Our hotel in Quebec, for those interested, was the Charles-Alexandre on the Grande Allee and within walking distance to just about everything in The Old City as well as some interesting shopping areas.  I stayed here when I brought my parents to Quebec in 2000, rooms are pretty well priced for so close to the Old City and they have a very nice light breakfast served either at 7 or 9 a.m.  We chose the 7 a.m. serving so that we could get out to the City earlier before the days got too hot.
Once we were checked into our room and stashed our luggage, Mary said that her dream since fourth grade history was to see The Plains of Abraham where Major General James Wolfe fought and won against the Marquis de Montcalm in what we Americans call "The French and Indian War" and the Quebecois call "The War of Conquest", I guess it is all in the perspective of things.
Anyway, Mary has always wanted to see this and lucky for us, it was just a few blocks south of our hotel.  The Plains area is now a large park that includes several gun turrents that were build by the British just after the War of 1812 to defend against those pesky Americans who might lay siege against the City again.  The Americans never invaded, and several of the gun turrents remain.

Gun turrent facing the river from the main path through The Plains of Abraham

Close up of one of the window of a gun turrent looking south along the river

Mary took pictures of all of the plaques that were posted around the gun turrents and other items of interest so that she could share the information with her family when she got home, I didn't so am working from memory here, if Mary reads this she can let me know what I missed.



From here we walked down and into the Old Cit stoping on the wooden pavilion to check out the statues and the view from the top of the hill. Some good views down into parts of the Old City from here, gives one an example of what some towns in France look like.

     

The building in front here has an interesting mural on the side depicting life scenes of this area from the French colonial period up to modern times.  Several large building in this area had similar murals on the walls.  We saw a good number of people posing in front of the murals standing to resemble a person in the scene or to fit into the scene.  The murals are quite impressive.

We decided to walk down to this area and when going down the first time you don't realize how many steps it is down the hill that you have to repeat going back up the hill, but we did it several times during the week after this first adventure.

At the bottom of this section there are some remains of the original buildings of this area, they are preserved by the Quebec historical society and show the size of some of the dwellings that people worked or lived in during the early French settlement period.

Dwellings built right on the side of the hill, the French were noted for using any shape rock in their foundations.  Later British buildings differ by the use of squared rock for foundations and building materials.

One of the oldest French churches is located in this area, one of many that we ventured into during our stay in Quebec. 

Noteworthy is the ship hanging in the middle of the church, I found this interesting due to the large number of cod fishermen that were part of the foundation of New France.

After our visit to the church it was getting late so we headed back up to the Grande Allee where all of the restaurants had their outdoor seating set up for the summer.  We chose to eat at St. Hubert's this night and had a great dinner followed by two different but amazing desserts.  We planned to come back here just for dessert before the end of the week.  By the end of dinner it was dark and we headed back to the hotel, planned on where we wanted to go tomorrow and called it a night.