Red Lake County French Students Visit Quebec

Six members of the RLC French 2 Class, their teacher, and a parent visited the province of Quebec March 28 – April 1, 2016. Lafayette High School students were Hope Cardinal, Danielle Eckstein and ShyAnn Larson. Red Lake County Central students were Shelby Gunderson, Lynsey Morris and Dede Walton. Adult travelers were parent Mandi Cardinal and teacher Lynn Vatthauer.

Our adventure began Easter Sunday, at 5:00 in the evening, when we loaded a school van and headed to Fargo to stay overnight for an early flight the next day. We left Fargo at 5:35 in the morning and arrived in Montreal at 11:30. After going through customs, we boarded our mini bus around 12:20 and headed north (three and a half hours) to Quebec City. The first stop on the tour was the Hôtel de Glace (Ice Hotel) in Quebec City. In its 16th season, the Hôtel de Glace is open from the beginning of January to the end of March. This year’s hotel, which was based on a river theme, was built by only fifty workers using over 30,000 tons of snow and 500 tons of ice. Even though it was raining, causing the snow and ice to melt faster, we all agreed the Ice Hotel was amazing. We only had an hour to go through the forty-four rooms and suites and the wedding chapel, boasted as being one of the top ten dreamiest settings for a wedding, but we enjoyed every minute of it, even taking time to slide on the ice slides inside the hotel. Unfortunately, since we visited during the last hour of the season, we were unable to check out the Sugar Shack, snow shoe trails, tubing slides or ice maze.

We left the Hôtel de Glace to check into our hotel, a beautiful, warm hotel in Quebec City. We had about an hour to go to our rooms and get ready for supper and our introduction to Quebec City by Mme Vatthauer’s friend, Simon, a native of Quebec, who is a tour guide in this beautiful city. Simon had our bus driver take us around the lower town, then the upper town, giving us a little history along the way. We got off the bus and said “au revoir” to our driver in front of the historical Château Frontenac. After a quick introduction to the area around the Chateau, (it was windy and raining) we walked a short distance to “Le Petit Château”, a quaint little restaurant specializing in fondue, raclette, crepes and poutine. We ordered off the menu, choosing poutine and the fondue trio. The first course was a cheese fondue which was served with bread. The second course was chicken, which we cooked in an onion broth in the fondue pot. Accompanying the chicken were baked potatoes and vegetables. The final course was a dessert fondue; we tried both chocolate and maple, which were equally delicious. After our satisfying meal, we looked at the time and were quite surprised to discover we had been at the restaurant over 2 hours —it takes time to cook three courses in a fondue pot! We took taxi cabs back to the hotel and were happy to call it a night after a very long, fun, and exciting day.

Since we had to get up at 3:00 a.m. Monday we decided to sleep in a little Tuesday morning. Our second day in Canada began around 9 a.m. with a wonderful breakfast provided by our hotel. After eating, we prepared for a long day of exploring. Simon met our group in the hotel lobby at 10 a.m. to start our walking tour of Old Quebec. Our hotel was in the center of Quebec City, so we had to walk 45 minutes to get to the old town.

Simon was a fantastic, up-beat, and ecstatic tour guide! He made walking 8 miles (Mme V. had her Fitbit on to keep track of our distance) a lot of fun and helped our group gain great knowledge of Quebec City. Having grown up there, Simon was very knowledgeable about its history. Along the way we did some souvenir shopping and laughed a lot with Simon. Since we had a huge breakfast and were going to eat a little earlier that night, we decided to just have a snack for lunch. We chose a place that offered one of Canada's specialties, maple syrup products. This shop offered a variety of items including maple gelato, taffy, muffins, cookies, and candies. Everything our group tried was delicious! After our snack, we headed to The Martello Tower. Vieux Quebec is a fortified city and the Martello Tower was one of the three towers built to defend it. The tower was circular in form, with thicker walls on the sides facing the sea. This work, whose structure is reminiscent of the medieval tower, enabled the British military to use fewer soldiers in time of war. We were given a hands-on history lesson by resident historian, Nathalie, dressed as a captain of the British army. Our group was taught the twenty-second method of loading a gun (replicas, not the real thing) and we acted out a journal entry of a British soldier who was punished for disobeying an order. Our captain divided us into two groups and sent us to all three floors of the tower searching for words taped to the walls and objects on each level. Our task was to unscramble words written on the slips of paper and write them down on a clipboard. For each English word spelled correctly we earned one point for our team; we earned four points for every French word. All of the words were significant to the Martello Tower so it was another fun way to learn about life of a soldier in the tower. After our history lesson and activity in the tower, we walked back down to the Old Quebec area and had a little more time to shop. After shopping and walking over 24,000 steps, including sixty-four flights of stairs, we decided to eat an early supper at the popular restaurant Le Cochon Dingue, which specializes in Canadian cuisine. They had a special menu for March which featured a “Carnival de Poutine”. Most of us ordered a different poutine (a mixture of gravy, French fries, and cheese curds, a Canadian specialty) sharing bites with one another to determine the best poutine. We also sampled their desserts, including: sugar pie, dessert poutine (cheese cake bites, churros, and caramel sauce), maple fudge, maple cream cake, raspberry squares, and chocolate truffles. Our day was exhausting and exciting at the same time, thanks to our fantastic tour guide, Simon. We ended our day relaxing at the pool and in our rooms at our beautiful hotel.

Wednesday, March 30th, was another busy day. We left our hotel at 9:30 for our last look of Quebec City. To save time, Simon lead us to the local bus stop where we boarded a city bus to take us to Vieux Quebec. We did some last minute souvenir shopping and went inside the Château Frontenac, which is now a luxury hotel, for a quick tour. It was a nice morning and we took many pictures outside the hotel to help us remember the great time we had in this beautiful city with our SUPER GUIDE, Simon. After saying our goodbyes, we boarded another minibus and headed back to Montreal. Our first stop was at Montmorency Falls, just outside Quebec City. This waterfall is higher than Niagara Falls but not nearly as wide. On our way to the falls we stopped to drink the spring water coming down the face of a rock – very refreshing. Some of our group chose to climb the stairs up to the bridge that goes over the falls; what a view! We got back on the bus and went the rest of the way to Montreal, stopping at a Tim Hortons in Trois Rivières for a fifteen minute break and snack. Our first stop in Montreal was the Botanical Gardens. Since it was already 4:00 in the afternoon we decided it would not be worth the nineteen dollar entrance fee to go in for only an hour so we spent fifteen minutes in the gift shop and headed to our next stop, Saint Joseph’s Oratory. On the way to the oratory some of us sampled a few of the snacks purchased from the gift shop such as ranch-flavored crickets and barbecue flavored beetles – yum! When we arrived at the parking lot of St. Joseph’s Oratory we were blown away at how big it was as well as how many steps we were going to have to climb in order to get to it. We stopped half-way up for a group photo and a quick rest before entering the massive hall. There was a Mass in session so we explored the many passages and other levels before going into the main sanctuary. This was a beautiful church and we were drawn to the many statues throughout the oratory, especially to their size and detailing. We left St. Joseph’s to go to Mont Royal Park for a view of the city (elevation 768 feet). Driving through the park our driver pointed out that we were passing by the largest cemetery in North America. He also showed us the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Upon arriving at the top of Parc Royal our driver, Michel, showed us where we had been earlier in the day, near Olympic stadium, where we were going to stay in Old Montreal, and the fact that the city was located on an island. It was a beautiful view of the city. After taking several photos we got back on the bus to go to our hotel in Vieux Montreal. We checked into the hotel and decided to go to supper right away. We went to the restaurant “Crêperie Chez Suzette” which specialized in Quebecoise Cuisine. Most of us ordered main-dish crepes. Madame V. decided we needed to have an appetizer before our meal so she ordered two servings of escargots au gratin. The general consensus was that we really enjoyed snails! Our savory crepes were delicious as were the dessert crepes! Before going back to the hotel we wandered around the neighborhood, ending up at the church made famous by Canadian singer Celine Dion, Notre Dame de Montreal. It was a gorgeous evening so we sat in the park across from the church, listening to Celine Dion, updating our Facebook accounts, snap-chatting, instagramming and enjoying each other’s company. It was the perfect ending to another great day.

Thursday we explored the city of Montreal. Our first stop was the Notre Dame Cathedral, where we had been the night before. We were glad it was open for tourists this morning as it was a very rainy day. Entering the church we immediately began to make comparisons to the St. Joseph’s Oratory we had visited Wednesday. It was fun to compare the two. They were both beautiful, historical places of worship that had very different styles. The rest of the day was set aside to explore the underground city and get in a little more shopping, a perfect thing to do on a rainy day. Montreal's underground city is the largest of its kind in the world, a subterranean pedestrian network 20.5 miles of the city's downtown core. We found an entrance to the underground, Le Réso, only a few blocks from the cathedral. We stopped at an information desk at the first building we came to, The International Trade Center, to get a map to help us figure out how to get to one of the underground shopping centers. It was a little tricky getting there but we finally succeeded. The first thing we did was find the food court where we had over 20 restaurants/cuisines from which to choose. Once fortified, we hit the stores and shopped until we dropped! We walked five miles that day. Thankfully, we took the subway back to where we started because we were too tired to try to figure our way back through all those buildings and tunnels. We learned that Montreal is rich in culture, and that the food is delicious!

Friday was bitter-sweet. We were happy to be going home after a whirl-wind 5 days, but sad to leave the beautiful province of Quebec, a place we all hope to return one day. We are very grateful for the opportunity to visit both Quebec City and Montreal and all feel a little more confident speaking French. We would like to thank everyone who supported our fundraising efforts as well as those who gave us donations to help defer the cost of our trip. It was a very memorable trip that will not soon be forgotten. Merci beaucoup!

RLC French 2 Class

Hope Cardinal, Danielle Eckstein, Shelby Gunderson, ShyAnn Larson, Lynsey Morris, Dede Walton and Mme V (Lynn Vatthauer)