Quebec city

Wendy and I are currently in Quebec city while Wendy attends a conference. We flew from YTZ (Billy Bishop airport / Toronto City Centre) on Porter airlines. 

Luckily, we took the GO train - there was a marathon on that completely closed the Lakeshore and caused traffic chaos. Everyone at the airport was upset and rushed (is that a Toronto thing...?) except us.

The new tunnel to the airport was very convenient and was quite a pleasant way to get there. Barely a 5 min walk on moving sidewalks. 

The flight was fast and the fall colours were beautiful as we arrived in Quebec. On leaving the airport it started to snow! Winter seems closer here than at home. 

View from our hotel

Wendy with her poster

Dinner at the Parmesan

Night scene

On my first day of exploration, I tracked down a geocache. This one is a cannonball that supposedly landed here during the war of 1759. The tree grew around it and it is still where it landed. 

First geocache I found in Quebec 

The shopping was typically touristy, with some fashion I don't really get...

This is not far from our hotel, so I had to take a picture for our friend Penny who finds many such art pieces around Toronto.

Today I walked around the Plains of Abraham. This is one of the Martello towers overlooking the river.

Martello tower

 Here is a selfie showing some of the fall colours.

I went into the Musée national des beaux-art du Quebec and spent several hours wandering the collections. The Fernand Leduc exposition confirmed that I really don't resonate with modern art very well. The piece below didn't do anything for me.

This one, appearing like a plain white canvas was actually more intriguing when you got closer. It has a very subtle graphic pattern that has been painted over with white such that you can only see from very close. Clever, but not something I would use to decorate around.

Not just white! 

 Part of the museum is in an old prison.  Here are some cells.

From inside a cell

The Jean-Paul Riopelle exposition was interesting, but not really my style either.

This one was complex and included sand and cinders in the composition. I was captivated by this piece for quite a while.

Ok, he lost me on the point to this piece...

There was a turret that you could ascend and it housed some wood art by David Moore. Beautiful gallery setting and interesting sculptures in wood.

View from turret 

This piece, "the penalty" by Alfred Laliberte, struck a chord with me for some reason. It looked to me like it represented a painful burden.

I was most impressed by the decorative stained glass treatment for the fire cabinets.

I'll post some more pictures in the coming days as these are only ones taken with my phone. I have hundreds more on my real camera.

September was a nice break from the summer

Thankfully, not much happened in September. Everything nicely slowed down as we got things back under control for another school year. Here are some of the highlights.

Parker started Grade 10 this year, this time at the single location of Dundas Valley Secondary School. Last year he was located at the east campus (formerly Parkside High), but the west campus (formerly Highland) was renovated and opened just in time for the new school year. They didn't have enough desks and chairs for everyone for several weeks, but they seem to have sorted that out now. We think that this picture of Parker is likely the very first one since Adam started school that actually required an umbrella. I will have to look back at our old photos to see whether that is true.

Grade 10!

I did get some fabric and had some foam cut (the store where I bought it cut it all in 5 minutes!). The chairs are now much more comfortable and don't look quite so late 80s pastel pink/green. This fabric has some metallic gold in it as well as shiny brown. Wonder how long it will be until someone cringes at the choice of fabric like we did with the chairs' previous incarnation? The fabric I removed wasn't the original, so I can only guess what it might have been!

2 leaves can be added to make this a huge table

We had Mel and Murray's dog Abby stay for a sleepover while they were away. She fit right in and learned all the proper places to sit to watch the action.

Parker got his full braces this month. He'll have them for a few years. He also had a couple of bite guards attached inside so his lower teeth don't knock off the braces from the inside.

We got the opportunity to do another leg on the Bruce Trail hike with Terry and Theresa. Here we are near the starting point of the leg (close to Pen Centre shopping mall). We ended at Brock University.

The Bruce Trail hike was on a perfect weather day - here is some of the early fall colour that we noted.

Maddy has been watching a lot of Blue Jays games recently, so her eyes were getting a little strained. You can just see how tired she is after cheering for several hours...

See you next with October!

Yup, it's fall - time for a family photo!

Kind of a strange week this week. Although there seemed to be a lot of interesting things going on with the moon (a lunar eclipse, a really big moon the next day, etc.), none of us got up early enough to check out the shows. However, Tuesday morning started off with an unusual show - a full rainbow visible just after arriving at work. Not a great picture, but it was a nice sight to see.

It was a beautiful, if cool, fall day today. Took our usual hike with Maddy and enjoyed the colours. Below is one tree that hasn't dropped as many leaves as most of the others.

A beautiful fall day

I used my camera phone to take all the photos during the hike. I think the one below of Maddy turned out very well (I used the dual cameras on the back of my HTC phone to detect then blur out the background). The photo of Maddy and I below shows what the phone produces without using the extra camera.

Maddy, wondering why her humans wanted her to stay still.

Maddy and I resting in the leaves.

I guess Maddy was too tired - the picture below was taken of her flaked out on the bed after the hike and getting her feet washed.

What really clued us in that fall was in full swing was the resumption of hockey practices. Parker went to hockey evaluations for the Dundas Minor Hockey League last weekend and was assigned to the Dundas Blackhawks. He is actually quite thrilled, mostly because he has a great relationship with the coaches. Today he got his uniform (#8) and they practiced as a team.

Parker, #8 Dundas Blackhawks

Last weekend we literally dragged the kids from their beds and took them to the hiking trails near the train station.  No, we didn't force them to hike (that might be considered as torture for teenagers). Actually, we went to do our annual family photo (with my real camera). Wendy made sure we all wore a coordinating colour and we had scoped out the location the day before. It is almost underneath the big tree in the picture above (2nd one of this post).

Took a while to get a good image while Maddy was looking, especially since my wireless remote control for the camera had a dead battery (it worked when I tested it the day before...!). I had to do a lot of running back and forth between the family and the camera, but the result turned out OK. After that fiasco, I bought more batteries but won't put them in until I need them...

I have pasted our picture below in a size that is larger than this blog recommends, so it will likely overlap the background a bit. 

Here it is - the official 2014 fall Seidlitz family photo:

Seidlitz family October 2014