The days got short and dark so fast in Quebec. By the end of November the sun was setting at 3:52 or some such time. I have never been anywhere where the sun sets in the 4:00 hour (I think sunset is after 5 pm in Utah, even in December) so having it in the three o'clock hour felt otherworldly. I actually quite liked it. It felt cozy and wintry, and the house was snug with the lights of the city outside. (I realize if I were to have stayed through the gloom of January and February and even March…perhaps I would have felt differently.)
But it did make the days feel so fleeting. I'd go out to do the shopping after putting Gus and Clementine down for nap around 1 pm, and when I walked out of the store at 2:30 I'd see the slanting sunlight and feel mildly panicked and disoriented, like I'd better hurry home to get dinner ready. By the time we ate dinner around 6 pm (or 18h as I finally became accustomed to thinking, just in time to go home), it felt like it had been dark for hours and must surely be about time for bed!
It also was nice, in November, to feel free to go full-on into Christmas preparation, since Canadian Thanksgiving is before Halloween! I personally don't mind when people decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving, but I can never quite bring myself to do it wholeheartedly for fear poor Thanksgiving will feel bad! So it was fun in Quebec to just go ahead and put up our tiny tree and our Christmas lights just as early as we pleased! With Christmas decorations going up all around the city as well, it felt exciting and lovely.
The late-afternoon slanty sunlight was so beautiful. It seemed like it started right after noon and stayed around till sunset. I loved it. So many of the images in my memory of the last couple months are bathed in that cold, yellow light.
The night Sam and I went to the temple, the kids stayed up late making Christmas decorations. They made all these darling little paper scenes.
We did still celebrate American Thanksgiving, of course! I wasn't sure I'd be able to find a turkey, but Walmart had them. We had our traditional pie-making night on the Wednesday.
Daisy's handiwork
Down in Place Royale
And all of the pies: cheesecake with caramel sauce, lemon sour cream pie, and chocolate chip cookie pie.
We had both sets of missionaries over for Thanksgiving dinner. They weren't allowed to come at the same time (hmmph) so we had two dinners, two hours apart! We ate dinner and pie with the sisters and then pie and leftover dinner with the elders. Yum.
We strung Christmas lights up in the dining room and I wished we'd had them the whole time! That room was always too dim and the Christmas lights brightened it up so nicely! We left them there when we went home. I hope the landlord appreciated it. :)
Daisy put up a bunch of posters in the dining room, with Thanksgiving prompts on them. Everyone wrote on them before and after dinner. It was nice.
The feast awaits
First round of pies being eaten
The German Christmas Market (Marché de Noël allemand) in Quebec is famous, and I was very happy that it opened in late November so we could see it. (We were leaving in mid-December.) All the other buildings and sites in Old Quebec got all decorated and festive at the same time so as not to be outdone, I suppose. Every day we'd go out and something new would be Christmasified. Above you can see the festive window boxes inside the courtyard at the Château.
And Christmas trees inside the Château!
Petit Champlain
Place d'Youville
The ice skating rink at Place d'Youville opened on November 25th and I believe the girls and Teddy went there just about every day between then and December 10th when we left for home. They LOVED it. It is in the most beautiful picturesque spot in front of Porte Saint-Jean, and it's free (if you have your own skates…which they did, thanks to the thrift store—though the girls had to share theirs). I loved going to watch them. We even let the little kids go and rent skates a couple times. The skating rink (patinoire) played music—admittedly sometimes annoying music; "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is horrifying in French—but when the music was good, and the Christmas lights were glowing in the square while the sun set and skaters glided around the rink, it was so magical!
The kids have hardly ever been skating—only a few times with the Young Women and maybe once as a family. But they picked it up amazingly fast, and when you can go for a couple hours every day you improve so quickly! Junie watched a couple videos and learned to do arabesques and simple spins. Daisy was trying out ballet moves too. Malachi would race around so fast, like a speed-skater. And Teddy and Goldie who had never skated in their lives got to where they were hardly ever falling down. I had no desire to skate myself (I fell when I took a youth group several years ago and it hurt so much, I'm terrified of doing that again) but I loved seeing the kids take to it so well!
Often there were a couple hours on weekdays when there was no one else at the rink, and our kids had it all to themselves. They loved that.
There's Junie skating!
And Junie putting weight on her skate while trying to glue it at home. It came unglued from the blade sometimes.
Ky and Daisy
Here we are bundled up to go see the opening night of the Christmas Market.
We got to hear the alpenhorns play—these cool long, low horns played in the Alps. It was very interesting to watch and listen to! The little boys were especially fascinated!
Cute little things for sale
We tried really good crêpes and sugared almonds and some delicious sausages. But the very best thing was the fondue bread.
They take a baguette and poke it onto a sort of wide skewer, which makes a hole in the bread. And then they spoon warm fondue into the hole until it fills up. When you bite into the bread the cheesy fondue is all melty through it. It is amazing. I wish I'd gotten it ten more times.
Gnomes!
And a mini-Château. Cute.
It was interesting, I think I heard more English spoken at the Christmas Market in a weekend than I had heard in the last four months put together. I guess a lot of tourists come for it!
The Christmas Market was all over Old Quebec, on the way to everywhere, so we walked through it practically every day. It was much more pleasant on Thursdays or afternoons without the crowds! You could actually see into the booths and not wait in food lines and walk around without people shoving past you. But I guess it was kind of fun with the crowds, too. It felt festive. Unfortunately it also seemed like fully half the booths were selling some kind of alcoholic drink…mulled wine or glühwein or blackcurrant brandy or who knows what. It felt like a waste of space that could have been used for more fondue! Or more gnomes, at least. :)
The Château lit in red and green!
The highlight of every walk—watching the Zamboni clean the ice rink!
Don't worry, you haven't seen the last of the Christmas Market pictures! :)
"Magical" really is the best word to describe watching the kids at that skating rink. I don't know why it struck such a chord with me, but it felt like every time we went we were being transported to a storybook somewhere. And I guess that was true of the whole Christmas market!
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