Quebec City Impressions

Quebec is a Canadian province, where French is the dominant language. Quebec tried to be separated from Canada a couple times .... that's the extent I knew about Quebec. Recently I visited Quebec city for a week on a business trip, and gained some first hand, but mostly superficial experience of Quebec city.

River St, Lawrence runs through Quebec city, which is a medium size city in US standard.  Streets are typically narrow (two lanes), main throughput is 4 lanes with one lane in each direction reserved for buses and taxis,  and there are few tall buildings.  The streets in downtown area (including the old town) are safe to walk, and I walked to convention center,  restaurants and tourist attractions if it was not raining or too late in nights. I encountered only Caucasians in the streets. In fact Quebec is 97% white according to census. Interestingly, the Uber drivers I met were all people of color, mostly Arabian descents or African descent.  My assumption is that those are refugees Canada took in in recent years.

old town - Vieux-Québec

There are many small parks in the city, most of them have some kind of art work, sculptures, monuments. There are many more churches - there are two churches near the hotel Pur where I stayed. There are two churches named Notre-Dame. The biggest church in the province, I believe, is The Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, about 20 miles northeast to downtown.

Parc Gilles-Lamontagne 

Latin America Park

Jean-Paul-L'Allier Garden

Quebec Flag

Church of St Roch

The Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré

Notre-Dame de Quebec Basilica

Notre-Dame des Victories

Unlike my first visit to Paris, staff at hotel, convention center, waiters and waitresses in restaurants in Quebec city spoke English with us freely and without reservation. I learned a few courtesy french words before leaving as well,  'bonjour', 'merci'. The concierge at Pur was very nice, he recommended several restaurants to us, and we went to two of them, Abacore, a fish restaurant for the first dinner, and Le Clocher Penche, a local french restaurant, where reservation is required for our last dinner at Quebec. My colleague and I  had my first oyster there due to ignorance, but it tasted delicious and I did not have negative reaction to it. The waitress spoke fluent English with no french accent and was nice both in personality and in serving us. We had great last dinner - delicious food, engaging conversation,  which lasted more than 2 hours! We walked back to hotel afterwards.

abaCore - a fish restaurant

tempura cod

Cornish chicken  

pig blood pudding

The most impressive thing about Quebec city is the preservation of old town Quebec - Vieux-Québec, which dated back to 1608, which claims the only fortified city walls remaining in the Americas north of Mexico. This area was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985 as the "Historic District of Old Québec".

We went old town several times during our stay there, and walked there again on our last day at Quebec city, to have breakfast and to walk on the wall. A cool cloudy morning, a hearty breakfast and quiet streets, a well preserved historical site! We left Quebec city on a good note.

a street in Vieux-Québec

A fort of the city wall

a separation of past and present 

yellow flowers on the city wall

Glimpse of Tokyo - by Lily

A business trip brought me to Tokyo in May. Since I was going with my Japanese colleague, I didn’t do any research or preparation. Tokyo turned out to be very different than I imagined….

A crowded city

Tokyo on the surface doesn’t seem to be very crowded. The roads are narrow, cars many, but there are many trees lining up the streets that mellows the scene. There’s even a small park up the hill right behind our hotel in the busy Shinagawa district. However, the crowd shows up at every major train transit. There can be 16 or more platforms at each transit, people rush in and out in fast pace. Things happen in amazingly good order; the platforms are constantly filled with people then emptied out as the trains leave then filled again. Up at the street level, all day long there are large crowd crossing the intersection in a hurried pace.

The water way

            It didn’t occur to me that you could travel in the city by water ways until my friend took me to the water bus. We took the train to Hama Rikyu, a landscape park in central Tokyo, and boarded the water cruise to Asakusa. Along the way, we passed many bridges, saw many interesting buildings along the banks, and saw people running along the riverside parks.

on water bus

The temples and gardens

When we arrived at Sensoji temple in Asakusa district, it turned out to be the annual Sanja Festival. It was super crowded with a lot of celebration going on. Teams carrying mikoshi (portable shrines) parade through the temple, they chant, dance, and jostle through the crowd competing with each other.

In the afternoon, when I strolled into the Meiji jingu it was mostly quiet and peace. Evergreen forest covered the road leading to the temple. As I get close to the shrine, there’s a wall of barrels of sake on one side, the other side a water basin where people perform Temizu, a hand washing custom, before entering the shrine.

Walking through the shrine exiting from its north side, I headed to Shinjuku Gyoen, the royal garden. I was surprised to see such a large patch of green field in the center of crowded Tokyo. Families with kids were enjoying the field. The garden features a mix of French, English, and Japanese styles. The greenhouse has some amazing floras.

barrel of sake

ceremony of washing hands

Sensoji Celebration

Sensoji celebration 2

Flowers in the greenhouse

Garden behind the hotel

The national garden

The food and the toilet

            There’s food everywhere in Tokyo and people are eating all the time 😊 My friend always meticulously maps out her eating route every time she goes back home, so I tried a variety of things with her from rice burger to raw egg noodles. She also took me to the supermarket at train transit to marvel at the neatly packaged vegetables and the price of a melon (over $300 for a cantaloupe! extreme case). But I can’t help wondering what’s in the Japanese diet that contributes to their health and longevity. Traditional Japanese food are pickled, fermented, or fried, and with a lot of carb. Diet alone can’t be it. Perhaps it's the fact that people are always on the move walking 😊   

At the end of a busy day, sitting on the luxurious Japanese toilet becomes an extremely soothing experience.  The seat warm to the bone, hot water streams up under the control of my finger tip making one totally relaxed, a whole day's tiredness is gone! 

A bidet

* bidet - A bidet is a plumbing fixture or type of sink intended for washing the genitalia, perineum, inner buttocks, and anus of the human body. It may be located next to the toilet in the toilet room. Fixtures that combine a toilet seat with a bidet, which may be electronic, are available. "Bidet" is a French loanword

Montmorency Falls at Quebec

Montmorency falls is a water  fall 10 miles north from downtown Quebec city. It is well known for its height of 275 ft, which is about 100 ft taller than Niagara falls, but much narrower. The water fall is at the mouth of the river Montmorency where it merges with St Lawrence river. I went to Quebec for a technical conference last week and had the chance to visit this amazing water falls. My colleague and I were pretty lucky when we went there. It had been raining the previous days at Quebec and it turned from cloudy to sunny. 

We arrived at the Montmorency fall park ~ 8:30am and the park was essentially empty, few people there and we had the whole area for ourselves.

Mouth of Montmorency River and St. Lawrence River

There is a boarded trail along the slop of the gorge, surrounded by dense bushes and trees. The mouth of Montmorency river is beneath the trail where it pours into river St. Lawrence. We walked less than 100 yards on the board walk when it turned, and we heard the thunderous water falls, and saw ziplines hanging in front of it; but we did not get the chance to experience it since the zipline was closed. On the bright side, the clouds moved quickly out of the area. The sky was clear with few white clouds.

Vista and Zip line launching pad

Climbed the stairs to the top of the gorge and we the crossed the water falls via a suspension pedestrian bridge.  The water falls has two drops, it seems that the first drop was artificially modified - it looked that water flow passes a concrete "dam", before it falls off the cliff.

suspension bridge over Montmorency fall

The first drop of the water fall

When we walked down the boarded stairs on the other side of the gorge, the sun was behind us and mist was in the front,  perfect condition to see rainbows! In fact there were double rainbows, one was obvious, and the other was faintly colored.

Montmorency falls  with rainbows

We hiked all the way down to the base of the water fall on the other side of the gorge, and let the mists fly passing us, getting wet and enjoying the beautiful scenery  -  blue sky, white clouds, roaring water, rainbows, and green trees and the suspension bridge. The area is small, it is less than a mile from the hotel B & B Montmorency falls parking lot to the base of the fall on the other side of the gorge. So we climbed back up to the top of the water falls instead of taking the cable cart.  It was past 10am, and the area started to become crowded. We were on our way to our next destination - The Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré.

Montmorency Falls is a must go when one visits Quebec.

our trails

panorama of Montmorency falls 

Dallas Bird Sanctury

A friend posted beautiful pictures of birds, mostly egrets,  on social media, which drew my attention. It turned out the photos were taken at Dallas bird sanctuary on UTSWMC campus. I decided to visit this nature preserve then.

A weekend in early June on the way home from Houston, we took a detour to visit this place, over 2 years since I knew its existence.

It was shortly after a severe storm devoured downtown. As we approached the sanctuary, we saw fell trees, large broken tree branches, we could not find an entrance or a sign when we arrived. We parked on the roadside by the area, and walked toward the wooded area where the sanctuary is supposed to be.

The sanctuary has densely spaced trees,  all we saw was just a green wall from less than 30 yards away. We walked closer to the tree saw a few egrets soaring in the sky and quickly we smelled strong odors.

outskirt of the sanctuary

All we saw were snow white grand egrets - on the tree branches singularly, on the top of trees in groups. There were many nests in the middle of the woods. Some egrets were soaring in the sky solo. 

What a scene!

An egret stood solo on at branch

Bird nests

egrets stood on tree top

cluster of egrets

The egrets I saw near our community are mostly fly solo . Apparently they do fish and live in group in large habitats, like this sanctuary.  We saw large group of egrets fly and fish together at Everglades national park.

But as we walked around the perimeter of the sanctuary, there were also sick or wounded egrets struggling, and quite a few dead birds on the ground. That's the reality of life!

The sanctuary provided the great egrets and other birds a habitat to live naturally.  

outskirt of the sanctuary

Inflating Car Tires ... using a hand pump

It is very important to keep the tires on a vehicle well inflated to the rated pressure. Under inflated tires have faster wear, and uneven tire pressures among the four tires can amplify the problem of uneven wear on tires.

But inflating tire is an inconvenient chore - many gas stations do not have air pump, for those who have, air pumps typically don't have gauge on them, one can easily over inflate tires - which is not good either, especially in summer time, it can lead to burst!! 

Recently one tire on my car had 2 psi lower pressure than the rest 3. This definitely could cause uneven wear. Unfortunately my dealer did not correct this problem during my recent car maintenance which included tire rotation.  On the other hand I kept forgetting to inflate the tire when I was on the road - with the assumption that I need to use the motorized pump to inflate tires.

Today I was determined to correct this problem, the air pump at the one gas station that has air, malfunctioned! 

On the way home it occurred to me  that I could use a hand pump to inflate the tire! I gave it a try when I got home: I inflated the under-inflated tire to the "exact" pressure as the rest of tires on the car in no time!!

Fortunately  my pump has a gauge and can inflate pressure up to 120psi; and the tire valve has a universal receptor and it can take the hand air pump's nozzle.  

In addition to tire rotation and aliment, now I have another way to minimize tire wear by keep all 4 tires have their rated pressures.

Note  - even though bicycle air pump is not designed to inflate tires, but it can as long as the tire air valve can receive the nozzle from hand pump.