October 2, 2023: Quebec City Food Tour and Meeting Our Fellow Travellers.
Our late night arrival in Quebec City was a bit chaotic. Our plane was late, luggage delivery was late and by the time we were looking for either a taxi or Uber there were none to be found! At least a dozen people were in line waiting for an occasional taxi to arrive. I tried to call for one but instructions were in French so that did not work. I tried ordering an Uber but kept getting rejected as none were available in the area. I figured trying to land an Uber was my best option and I did finally land one with an obscene ($55) surge pricing addition (on a regular ($50) fee, but at this point I was not going to argue as it was already past midnight and we have been waiting over 30 minutes to find a ride. We finally got to the hotel around 1:30AM- not a good start to the trip! I had already alerted Gerry that we would be arriving late and that we would meet in the morning for our scheduled food walking tour.
Later that morning : The Road Scholar course begins this evening at a 6 PM dinner. Until then we were free so we had planned to take a local food tour in the morning. As you may recall this is a common thing we do, especially when visiting a foreign country where we know little about their food. We have had some great food tours over the years, sampling some amazing dishes in places where we would not have entered if we had not been with a tour group. As it turned out our Quebec food tour was one of the best we have experienced!
After a group dinner at the hotel we met with our group leader for the week, Chantal Bellon, a former engineer, turned teacher, turned tour guide. We quickly learned that she was going to be a marvelous leader and we would be lucky to have her as our guide and chaperone. She briefed us on tomorrow’s activities and schedule and had the 29 members of our group tell who we were, where we were from and a bit about ourselves.