We're winding down to the end here. Quebec City was supposed to be our second to last stop before heading to Moncton and meeting up with the family. Our last stop was supposed to be camping and hiking one more time but due to the rain (it has been pouring all day) we decided to push it and arrived in Moncton Thursday night instead of Friday midday.

Before we left our rather interesting motel, we made sure to have a hotel booked in downtown. Staying here may have made for a fun story but I really didn't want to spend 2 nights here. We were in luck and found a Best Western who had an opening.

We were just going to leave the car at the hotel and head straight into the city since we were arriving early in the day but they had our room ready so we checked in and relaxed for a few minutes before starting off. 

I didn't realize when we first started walking how many hills and inclines there would be. I wasn't too happy about that with my leg and admit to being a bit cranky with Bob at first because of it. But, I took it slower and managed to make it into the city.

It was early afternoon at this point and we didn't want to book another hop-on-hop-off after just doing one the day before so we decided to simply explore the city on foot. Again, lots of hills, stairs, etc.

Our first stop was the citadel. Now for this, we were actually starting at the bottom on the promenade. I knew there would be stairs to get up to it but didn't know how many. Probably a good thing I didn't since I never would have attempted had I known. The picture doesn't quite do it justice. Bob decided to go ahead of me to find the entrance in but didn't get that far. He called me on the phone and says that he is on his way back to me since there were too many stairs and he didn't think I could do it. Fortunately for me, I was already almost at the top and decided to ignore him and keep going.

The citadel is still in active military use but they do have guided tours. We were going to do the tour but the next one wasn't available until after the changing of the guard and we didn't want to wait that long. We had already seen the changing of the guard over at Parliament in Ottawa already.

So after walking all around the outside and the little bit of the inside of the citadel we were allowed in, we went back to the promenade and decided to explore the archeological remains under the Dufferne Promenade. This was rather interesting with many artifacts as well as kiosks that gave a lot of information and pictures about life as it was years ago and the remains that were there.

On Wednesday and Saturday nights during the summer, Quebec City has fireworks at 10 pm over the river as a way of celebrating. We wanted to stay and see them so we went had a couple of drinks, then dinner, explored some of the artisinal streets in the city and then headed back to the promenade for the fireworks. They were spectacular. I have seen a lot of fireworks in my time and these were among the best of them. 

Back to the hotel and then on to Cornhill. As I said earlier, we didn't camp because of the rain. It rained the entire drive to Cornhill off and on, quite hard at times. Finishing up the trip is a little bittersweet. Happy to be done with all that driving and the trip and happy to see everyone, but sad that the trip is over as well.

We're going to stay here visiting for a few days before heading home.