Fwd: You're a Quebec City boy, where Sacrement Meets Laurier

20 July - Woke up really early in order to get to the touriste info place by twenty to eight in order to board the Gray Line tour for Quebec City - had initiallyconsidered doing a night there but the day tour seemed to be the most practical plan with my limited time in the region.  The tour contained a very nice Australian family - Chinese, but with the strongest australian accents i've ever heard.  I went to school with a bunch of ethnic Chinese who had reallystrong aussie accents and it never phased me then but maybe it's because i've had limited exposure to god's speech over the past year but it totally threw me.  Both of the parents were born in Australia - the dad even being third generation (his great granpappy came to Australia to mine gold in 1890 - and he used to live in Cairns, which kind of explained the broadness).  Very pleasant, kept on chattingthroughout the entire journey and made me promise to look them up in Sydney - they're on a three week America-Canada tour and were a bit perturbed with my opinion of their next stop, new York City.  The driver guide had the strongest quebeccer accent i'd ever heard - a voice that can only be gotten from living on the south bank of montreal and smoking 40 gitanes a day - because the tour was about half french and half english every comment and explanation was said in English first then French, almost like a rosetta stone for learning French (if you wanted to learn it with an outrageous Quebecois accent).  The city guide who joined us once we got t quebec city also had to do the same, even to the point of laughing for a longtime at his quaint little jokes when he said them in english and then again when he said them in french (one must presume that these jokeswould have been the thousandth time he'd said them if my experience with tour guides taught me anything).  The city itself is incredibly beautiful - certainly lives up to its claim as the most european city in north america although it's not so much like any european city ti've been to, more like what a european city should look like (it's very easy to imagine james bond racing an austin martin or bmw or whatever it is he drives these days through the narrow streets).  Perps because the main attraction for the city is tourism it's kept in a state that's more akin tsatisfyingthe tourists (aka me) than the residents.  We were driven up to Montmorency falls for a 15m happy snap vsit then taken back into town (a lot of the guidance was done from the bus) then given a few hours to do some exploration on our own but not before being pressured to eat at a presumably connected prix fixe restaurant that took forever to get our food (although it was rather good  have to admit).  Had lunch with an american attory and repaid some of my debt to the wonderful people of that country that seems to have lost its way.  After seeing what there was to see we were driven back to montreal where I was pleased to see celeste still at the information centre where I locked her then headed back to the house and onto a little music venue where I met alex for a show - a rather experiemntal one mand band who was not really to my taste but also saw a vancouver band, ladyhawk, who I'd actually seen back in vancouver a few months ago - very loud but very good, and then followed by a montreal band whose name I can't remember who weralso pretty cool.  Headed back to the house and was reminded of how muh older i'm getting - al-l the girls in the house ar all seemingly very intelligent, the books that ar being read are doestoesky and chomsky, but when movies were discussed I found myself biting my tongue when the relative quality of adam sandler manchild vehicles came up.  C'est la vie.