Matane Quebec

 After a very restful night of sleep we left about 9 AM, had McDonalds for breakfast, and hit the road in the rain.

We drove about an hour on the Trans Canada highway figuring out all the in’s and out’s of the controls for our Volkswagen Taos SUV. I must say that after driving it all day I REALLY like adaptive cruise control and wish we had it on the Seltos.

We swung off the super highway on to highway 132 which hugs the coastline, and we will be on this road completely around Gaspe peninsula over the next couple of days. It is slower but the views, both of the river/sea, hills, and villages are just wonderful. There was only occasional bad weather and other than being colder and windier than we would want (+13 degrees) it was a good day.

We first stopped in Kamarouski. It is a small tourist town with many artists living there doing “their thing”. We popped in to a Chocolaterue where we had hot chocolate (me) and a coffee (Caro). They grind the beans and make their own chocolate.

Down the highway in Trois Pistoles we made a point of stopping at a busy Fromageria (cheese place) that had real Quebec Poutine. It was yummy tasty and certainly filled us up for the day!

Google Maps does not really show it properly but there always seemed to be houses and tiny towns all along the way today.Many of these houses and yards were outstanding. So beautiful!!

We stopped and paid an entrance fee into a well known provincial park called BIC where we hiked for about an hour, enjoying beautiful scenery along the coastline. It was a nice break.

We carried on through Rimouski until we got to the town of Matane where we had reserved a motel room earlier. The town itself has some very pretty areas which we drove through. We had trouble finding an open restaurant (Sunday night) but did find a bar that served food so we had a small meal shared between us (still full from poutine!).

Our hotel room has that “old motel” smell but it will be OK for tonight. There aren’t many guests here so it will be quiet. The motel sits on the river/sea bank but the wind was too nasty so we didn’t spend too much time on the beach.

May 30/2026 Arrival in Quebec City

 Today we flew on Porter Airlines.

Firstly we ran into cousin Jessica in the airport (on her way to see family on the Island).

 I really liked the seating arrangements of the Embraer 195 (being a narrow body jet with two seats on each side of the aisle). The flight took off at 0705 and we were in Montreal four hours later.

With six hours to kill before our connecting flight on Air Transat we decided to leave the secure area and go walking outside. Well, that was pointless as outside is pretty much the same as Edmonton, no views except construction and vehicles. Fifteen minutes later we were back going through security. Funny thing; in Edmonton all our bags went through the machines with no hassle but in Montreal both our suitcases were rejected and had to be manually looked through (and yet Montreal appears to have the same machines as Edmonton).

We knew we were going to use our lounge passes and with the lounge rules saying you can stay for three hours max but can only enter three hours before your flight (which is stupid because they know you have to leave about 30 minutes earlier than that for boarding) we got there at 4 PM for our 7 PM flight only to be put on a wait list.LOL

40ish minutes later we were inside enjoying a rather slim selection of food and deserts but HEY, the wine and drinks were non-stop (if we had wished). It was “good enough” and we enjoyed probably 90 minutes there.

Our flight on Air Transat was an Airbus 321 which was only about half full.  I noticed upon arrival in Quebec City that Air Transit had a flight leaving for Paris a couple hours later so I imagine that our plane was used for that route..

Quebec City airport is quite beautiful! Makes Montreal's look really dumpy.

We found our way to the car rental location and picked up a small SUV reserved earlier through Costco Travel.

Our hotel was only a couple of kilometres away and by 9 PM we were in our room