Riviere-du-Loup, QC (Day 2) - Touring the CitySep 18, 2009
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The little French bakery/restaurant where we enjoyed lunch.
Downtown Riviere-du-Loup - almost feels like we're in Europe.
Catholic church in the downtown area. It wasn't open for a tour.
(Ron Writing) We had rain during the night and all morning. We just spent the morning doing some work and relaxing at home. This afternoon the rain stopped and it cleared off for awhile but by late afternoon it was again overcast.
We drove over to the visitor center here in Riviere-du-Loup to get some maps and information about the town and for the next leg of our journey. From there we went to the old downtown area where there are many small shops and stores. Yesterday we had just been discussing how surprised we were that we had yet to see a French bakery in Quebec. Today we found one in the old part of town. We decided to have lunch and had a bowl of portage (soup) with bread. We topped it off with coffee and French pastries. All very delicious. We liked the bread so much we bought a loaf to take with us.
We walked around the downtown area and then walked over to the waterfalls that are about five blocks from the downtown area. There is a dam and a power plant at the lowest and tallest of the falls. Due to the water level in the river there was no water spilling over the lower falls since it was all being used to generate power. But we did have a nice view of the smaller upper falls and views of the city from that area.
While we were walking we noticed an interesting implementation of crosswalk signals at intersections. The signals allow walking in both directions or diagonally simultaneously. Nice for pedestrians.
Our restaurant lunch was a nice treat. We haven’t been eating in restaurants very often in Canada because we find them quite a bit more expensive than comparable restaurants in the US. Not only are the prices high but the tax is outrageous. Depending on the province and the city the sales tax is between 13% and 19%. Food in grocery stores is expensive compared to the US but at least there is no sales tax unless it is a prepared food or takeout meal. Fuel and almost everything else we need to purchase is more expensive in Canada than the US – probably because there are all sorts of taxes on goods and services throughout the production chain. Perhaps this is something we have to look forward to in the US since our government cannot seem to control its spending.
The weather forecast is for better weather tomorrow so we decided to spend another night here.
