Quebec, a little-bit of Europe in North America

I’ve spent the last 9 days in Quebec meeting with clients in Montreal and the surrounding area. I got to bring my family along as well which is always nice. My daughter gets a week off during October. I never got a week off during October.

Quebec is really a gem of a province. The Rough Guide to Montreal put it best when they said Vancouver has the majestic scenery and Toronto the high-powered business atmosphere but Montreal is the most cosmopolitan. Like its roots from Paris it’s a real fashion capital. High-end clothing stores are on nearly every block in the downtown area and we wouldn’t leave our hotel room without being dressed to kill. It’s also nice to hear all the French spoken. My whole family shares a love for languages and it’s great to know that such a place exists 45 minutes by car from a U.S. border.

Montreal is a great pedestrian city were you can walk to an endless amount of shopping and eating choices. Even during the dead of winter Montreal offers the world’s largest connected underground malls and tunnels allowing you to traverse more than 40 kilometers of shopping, movies, fitness centers, ice skating rinks, office towers and condo buildings so you never have to go outside. That’s a good thing since it snows there 50% of the days between December and February.

The food we had was amazing. Dim Sum in China Town, Linguini and clams in little Italy, the best bagels the world has ever seen (they claim New York’s bagels are twice the size and half as good), and one heck of a Rueben sandwich. Let’s not forget the Poutine, Quebec’s invention that is now throughout Canada. Poutine are French-fries with chicken gravy and cheese curd. I had to look it up but the curd is taken from fresh white-cheddar, for those of you who care about such things.

While I wasn’t in meetings, I had a chance to go on three different tours.

We went to the Laurentian Mountains, apparently at the best time to go. The leaves were all changing colors but had not yet fallen due to rain. We were told that if we came only a week later it would have looked like winter.

The next day we went to Quebec City, which is the most European city I’ve seen on this continent. It really looks like a French village. If you live in the North East corridor and are looking for a nice weekend getaway with a special-someone, I strongly suggest this town. We were only there for a few hours and it wasn’t enough. Two-three days would be perfect, it seems.

The other trip that we had a chance to go on was a bus tour to Ottawa, Canada’s capital. I found it fascinating how easy it was to access the Parliament building. You could go into almost any chamber with no appointment. We even got to watch the lower house get prepared to vote. We could have watched the entire vote but we didn’t want to get stuck in the room so we left before they closed the doors.

Before we left Montreal we also had a chance to see their world famous botanical gardens and the 1976 Olympic park. Speaking of Olympic parks, I realized this week that I’ve seen too many of them. I don’t know why I’ve seen so many. It’s not like I’ve set out to see every Olympic stadium. But if I count them I’ve been to and up to the actual stadiums in these cities: Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Barcelona, Seoul, Los Angeles, Montreal, Munich, Mexico, Tokyo, Berlin, Lake Placid and Amsterdam. I’ve digressed enough.