I’m not an expert, but I imagine hotels near a metro station, but somewhere outside of the downtown area, may be less expensive (and easier to drive to, as when driving right downtown there is often more traffic.)
Also,** Mama Zappa,** let me know if you and your family would like to meet up with me, and we can do something fun together. 
Sorry for disappearing! We leave in 36 hours for the day-and-a-half drive to NH. 3 nights there then off to Montreal for a few days. We may drop anchor near Quebec City for the rest of it and just do long drives to things like whale-watching tours and to the small town where our friends all live (though that’s not all THAT far from Quebec City).
I’m thinking Tuesday / Wednesday for sightseeing in Montreal. Then Thursday (29th) perhaps whale-watching or other activity involving the river, and Friday to spend in Quebec City where we’ll be meeting with some of the friends. Saturday not sure - perhaps half a day driving back so we can spend Sunday in Portland, ME.
Emily, time permitting we’d love to meet up with you; I’ll send a PM. We are having dinner with one friend in Montreal - not sure if that’s Monday or Tuesday; I think it will depend on how long it takes us to get to Montreal from NH.
Update: It’s our last night in New Hampshire. Weather has been mixed - e.g. Saturday until about 12:30 it was pouring - no doubt causing a wedding party to be quite tense, though it cleared up in plenty of time for their wedding, which we saw outside our hotel). My husband did some hiking. The kids and I rode a ski lift nearby up and back - very pretty and peaceful.
Today, my husband hiked some more while the kids and I rode the cog railway. Some relatives drove up the mountain, which I gather was a white-knuckle experience. We had amazingly good weather for it - the summit was clear, not a bit of fog. The wind was bad enough (30+mph) that my hair was blown around so badly I couldn’t see - note to self, next time wear a hat… with a chin strap!! So I didn’t go the last few steps to the summit marker, but I got a photo of the kids there. It was cold (45 degrees or so) but I’d expected that.
The trail - where we saw it around the marker cairns - looked like a broken ankle waiting to happen; it appeared to be entirely large rocks, nothing walkable. OUCH. Glad we didn’t attempt it.
Tomorrow we head to the Canadian border via Ben and Jerry’s (at least, maybe others). Tuesday and Wednesday we sightsee in Montreal, then head up to Quebec City Wednesday evening. Funnily enough, one other family member (1st cousin once removed) will be in QC same time we will
Dunno if we’ll do a whale watching tour. I’d like to - even found one that will pick people up at hotels around QC and drive us up to Baie-Ste-Catherine. But it’ll depend on the weather. Then our friends / former students will drive down to QC one of the evenings for a meetup.
We’ll be staying in Langueil when in Montreal - very near a metro station. QC will see us at Chateau Laurier.
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Longueuil.
But we know what you mean.
Keep us posted!
Also, the Château Laurier is in Ottawa. Did you mean the Château Frontenac?
There is actually a Chateau Laurier in QC, per Priceline -
1220 Place George V
Though I’ve seen the one in Ottawa so I was confused as well. I looked at Frontenac… Too pricey.
We’re in Languieul right now eating at a Rotisserie St Hubert - not much else open nearby.
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Also - that border crossing was great! There was one car in front of us, and we were through in five minutes.
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Bienvenue!
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I’ve been watching this thread as I’m an Australian heading for Canada (for the first time) in the next week or so. Going to Vancouver then driving up to Jasper, to Lake Louise, then to Calgary. Flying over to Toronto then driving to Quebec and Montreal.
Really looking forward to eating lots of maple syrup (and any other interesting types we can find!) and berries (which are currently so expensive in Australia!).
Are there any places to go out of the city of Quebec (but within a short distance) that you’d highly recommend? I’m not much of a city person so would like to see some other things.
That’s very well situated. There’s a nice ice cream place nearby on St-Jean street called tutto gelato.
Île d’Orléans. There might be some apple/berry picking to do if you like that. On the way there are the Montmorency falls where there might be fireworks, although I have no idea if that’s still going on or when in the year it is.
You might still enjoy Abraham’s plains. It’s a big park in the city.
We stayed on Île d’Orléans for a week once. It’s a really serene relatively undeveloped island with farms and cideries. We picked strawberries. There are some restaurants; we especially liked Les Ancêtres Auberge & Restaurant for its great food and view of the river. The Chocolaterie d’Ile is a great spot for frozen custard cones dipped in dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or maple. The maple is amazing.
Which crossing did you end up taking?
It was great meeting you and your family, Mama Zappa!
Glad you had/are having what seems to be a great trip!
I’ll be curious about what the kids thought of the Ben and Jerry’s factory.
Also, I’ll have to try Spiderman’s border crossing suggestion. I’ve never had too much of a wait at the border at I-89, but I’ve also generally avoided actual rush hour or holiday traffic.
Well, sorry the weather sucks. Record-setting bullshit rain.
Like every day.
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I think we lucked out with the weather. Cool compared to DC & less humid. Some light rain most days, but timing as predicted so we could prepare. We ended up under cover for the heavy rains - really lucky there. If you want sucky weather come visit DC in August. Temps approaching 40 Celsius, near 100% humidity, daily t-storms which somehow don’t relieve the humidity, and occasional tornadoes.
Ditto!! Sorry Moon Unit threw such a hissy fit when she lost her Metro card!!
So here’s a not-so-brief trip report:
Drove from DC area to Albany the first day - got in quite late but got a convenient hotel, then went to a Denny’s for a midnight supper (only place that was open that late; we avoid chain restaurants as much as we can because yeesh, we can eat that crap at home!). Drove the scenic route from Albany to Bretton Woods the next day. Hotel (Omni Mount Washington) was gorgeous - it’s one of those old style hotels that they don’t build any more. Spent some good quality time there with distant relatives we’d never met before. It rained every day - including the Saturday where it poured… there was a set up for an outdoor wedding that we could see from our room, and i imagined how that family must be panicking. Luckily for them, the rain stopped in plenty of time. We got gorgeous photos of rainbows behind the hotel each afternoon.
We did the cog railway one day. Holy cow it was windy at the top of the mountain - my hair was blowing around so badly I could barely snap a photo of the kids at the summit. It was cold (45F, about 7C) which I’d expected. I saw bits of the hiking “trail” from the train - not so much a trail, as a collection of ankle-breaker-sized rocks. Anyone brave enough to attempt it: good luck with that. I’d have made it 10 steps before damaging myself!
We left the Omni on the Monday and drove over to Ben and Jerry’s via Plainfield to have pizza at the Positive Pie place. Cute little town; we walked around a bit and saw the river and little waterfall while waiting for the restaurant to open. Not much else there business-wise, sadly; places we thought existed appeared to have closed. The bookstore was there but wasn’t open yet. Yummy pizza.
A short-ish visit to Ben and Jerry’s, then we headed to that westernmost border crossing that you all recommended. We did have a wait… of about 2 minutes while the car ahead of us (Quebec plates) went through. No questions about why we were so far out of the way of the better-known crossings!! I was all set to answer questions in French but the guard asked if the others spoke French, I said no, so we did it in English. No tobacco, no alcohol, just personal electronics, no gifts for friends; it took less than 5 minutes.
That part of southern Quebec is very different, terrain-wise, than Vermont!! Much more like the US Midwest. The trip back to Maine, later in the week, was a much hillier drive.
We stayed at a hotel in Longueiul which was right on the Metro and overlooked the river, so very well located. The only time we needed our car was the first night, when we had to drive to get dinner (it was a holiday and nothing nearby was open). We ate at a Rotisserie St. Hubert which was one of the few other chains we visited on the trip.
Tuesday saw us in Vieux Montreal with Moon Unit while Dweezil did his own thing. Moon Unit did the zipline, I declined. Then we met up with EmilyG just as the skies opened. One of my few “we don’t speak the same language” experiences on the trip was when we went into a building to use an ATM, and asked a guard there where the Metro station was (we were near, but not at, the right spot). I didn’t understand his French, he didn’t speak English, so finally he just pointed :). Since the weather was so miserable, we all took the Metro over to the underground city. For folks who know DC but not Montreal, it was like a combination of Union Station, Tyson’s Corner, and the Crystal City Underground shopping areas.
Wednesday we went to the Biodome and botanical garden. Biodome was interesting - we’ve been to similar places (e.g. the Baltimore Aquarium has a rainforest area). The signs to the Botanical Garden were a bit misleading - I think we walked to a much more distant entrance than we needed to - but the garden itself was lovely. The one criticism I’d have was that there wasn’t good signage and we managed to get pretty well lost in it, LOL. I found an employee at a kiosk, pulled out our map, and managed to ask where we were and how to get to the front of the garden, in French.
At the end of the day, Typo Knig wanted to see the Ecosphere so we drove over to that island (we didn’t realize it was on the same Metro line as our hotel :smack:), then went to the north shore of the river for the drive to Quebec City. Stopped for dinner at a place called Les Mauvais Perdants (“The Sore Losers”) in Trois Rivieres - Yelp is great for finding local restaurants and with a name like that, we HAD to go there. Somewhat limited menu but I had a very tasty pear and turnip soup.
Hotel (Chateau Laurier) was quite well located, though the parking garage was a bit scary - we’d rented a minivan for the trip and it was very tough to maneuver it down the ramps without scraping the sides. We didn’t move it again after that!! I actually managed most of the checkin in French, until the clerk had to answer the phone, in English, and I realized he was a native Anglophone.
Thursday: Moon Unit was not interested in whale watching, so she hung out at the hotel (and went to a laundromat) while the rest of us did the whale tour: we were picked up by a shuttle bus right at the hotel, dropped near the Chateau Frontenac to get the big bus, and spent about 4 hours driving to Baie-Sainte-Catherine. We took the big boat vs the Zodiac (I wanted Zodiac but was outvoted). Managed to see some seals, some beluga whales, and a brief glimpse of fin whales - our boat and several Zodiacs were all stopped in the water where the fin whale had been spotted, and after a while we were rewarded with several spouts and the back of one whale. We stopped at a dairy in both directions, in the Charlevoix area - clearly they cater to tourists as they have bathrooms, and we got freshly-made cheese curds (which really DO squeak when you chew them). The bus driver narrated the scenery and talked about the whales - first in French (of which I caught about 25%) then in English.
Friday lunch was at Aux Anciens Canadiens - very tasty. We were seated next to a mother and daughter from Australia so we swapped travel stories; they were headed to New York next so we gave them lots of hints on places to visit there. We rode the funicular down and wandered the lower town (basse-ville?) briefly but couldn’t linger, as we didn’t have much time. Then we met up with our former student (stayed with us for 2 months while finishing up her CEGEP), who works for Parks Canada, and did some historical walking around with her (the under-the-terrace bits near Chateau Frontenac, and the fortfications tour). Dinner with her and her former professor (a friend of ours) on Rue St Jean.
Saturday we packed up the car. I managed to check out entirely in French (except for the clerk having to translate “facteur” - receipt). We walked over to Avenue Cartier (which Moon Unit had discovered as it has a laundromat) for lunch and goodies (a candy store - Pinoche?, and a gelato shop - Arnold) and a view of the nifty street lamp shades.
Sadly - no time to meet up with MichaelEMouse in QC :(.
Then we hit the road. That was the only day we had serious rain in Quebec City - fortunately it held off while we were walking. Every other day it drizzled off and on but it was no problem. The drive down to Portland (well, we stayed north of Augusta actually) was easy; we stopped at a grocery just north of the border to spend the rest of our Canadian currency on trip snacks, and we had a border crossing that was just as easy as the one into Canada. The terrain for that part of the drive was very different from the approach to Montreal - much hillier.
One day in Portland, a night afterward south of Hartford, and one last long day driving home.
We were only tempted to leave the kids north of the border once or twice… we resisted, as we figured Canada has never done anything that awful to us ;).
Great!