Day11: Trois Rivieres & Onward to Portneuf

Oldest house in Canada
We stayed in Trois Rivieres . We toured the old part of the town before we continued on to Quebec City. We drove downtown and walked around. We saw the two oldest buildings in Canada. One was a private house of a guy that helped the regions' natives. It was built in 1668 on the site where it now stands. The other is an Ursuline convent. There are a lot of historic buildings throughout the town. The town center is right adjacent to the docks.
This is the St. Lawrence Seaway and this is one of the largest shipping ports in North America.
The reason it is named Trois Rivieres is because when Cartier was sailing upstream past the mouth of the river he passed two big islands at the mouth and he thought there were three rivers emptying there. Later he found that it was one river which was later named Rivier Saint Maurice.

Judy says...

We decided to continue down the Chemin du Roy (highway 138). It was very scenic and although we could have made it to Quebec City (we call it Quebec city but here it is referred to as Quebec), we decided to call it a night at a little place called Portneuf. We did not want to miss seeing anything and it gets quite nippy as soon as the sun goes down. So it wasn't a hardship to stop. We went for something to eat at a local restaurant. All the older guys were there having coffee, sugar pie or poutine. I am not kidding. The poutine there is a meal. It has a whole portion of the menu to itself. The guy beside us had a bowl that probably held about 2-3 cups of poutine -it was fries, chili, huge chunks of cheese and everything is drowned in gravy. The buns in Quebec is served in celophane and is always white buns. The butter is light yellow and the margarine is white. The menus are in French so some of that high school french comes in handy, although there are some words we still haven't figured out. The waitresses are very friendly and can speak better English then we can French, There has only been a couple that can't speak any English but there is always someone that they can send out to translate. one day Terry ordered 2 Teen burgers in french and the young girl said to him in English "You speak very good French." Honestly we could grunt and they would know we are English! By the way Teen burger in French is "Teen burger".! One time I wanted a hotdog and Terry wanted me to order it in French "chaude chien". Well that threw everyone for a loop. So when they finally knew what I wanted I asked them how to say it and you guessed it ..."hot dog"! We were once offered an English menu and it still was partially french. I guess there are some words/phrases that they can't figure out. However KFC is PKF (for you non-frenchies -poulet is chicken). Go figure!