When we arrived in Trois-Rivieres, we decided to stop at the visitor’s center to see if they knew of a hotel with a handicapped room. They were able to get us a reservation at the Gouverneur Hotel  in the heart of the city.  I spent some time recovering from my traumatic event and we finally realized that we were hungry. I didn’t feel like going far, so we decided to eat in the hotel.  The restaurant is called La Rouge Vin and this ended up being one of the best dining experiences of our trip so far. We had the Table D’Hotel, which was a 4 course meal. Kathy had arancini with lobster and peas, pear and cheese soup, shrimp carbonara and fondant au chocolat while I devoured brie crusted in pistachios on gingered slaw with applesauce, fennel soup, salmon with a poached egg and hollandaise sauce on a mixed grain risotto with asparagus and crème brulee. Yum Yum!!!

After a good night’s sleep, we decided to explore a museum in Trois-Rivieres.  Trois-Rivieres is the second oldest French speaking city in North America.  It is rich in history and one could easily spend a week exploring it.  We chose to go to Manoir Boucher de Niverville which is an exhibition  of bourgeois life in New France. The museum is very well done. They have crammed a huge amount of information into a fairly small space and made it very inviting. The exhibits are in French and English and truly explore the life of these settlers in the 17th century.  I picked up some recipes.  Anyone interested in braised eel??  When I went to get the car, Kathy stayed and talked to the hostess of the museum. She suggested that we go see the Sanctuaire Notre-Dame-du-Cap which is the largest Marian shrine in Canada.

Notre-Dame-du-Cap is a magnificent church, surrounded by beautiful grounds that have the original small sanctuary to Mary, outdoors Stations of the Cross and Stations of the Rosary, a bridge dedicated to the rosary. Two miracles have occurred on this site, but I will let you look these up on their website.  What a holy site.  We seem to be concentrating on holy sites this trip, maybe it’s our time of life, or our spiritual development, but each has been very moving.

We took off from here to go past Quebec.  We passed by Montmorency Falls and stayed in St.-Anne de Beaupre at a small motel, Spring Motor, run by a multi-generational family .  The people were friendly, nice and the mother was a genealogist.  Kathy talked with her during breakfast the next morning.

Bridget  Days 39, 40