Je ne veux pas travailler

I wish I had brought my camera. Then again, some things aren't meant to be recorded and that's part of life.

The "Festival d'été de Québec" is on right now. I was sort of angry that I was coming to Québec in May because I saw that lots of musicians I wanted to hear were going to play in Toronto at that time. But now, they are coming to Québec!Anyway, I bought a pass to the festival and today I saw this Brazilian act. Get this - it was a cloudy afternoon with light rain on the loom. The sky was grey and then the artist started singing a song along the lines of "I love the sunshine". During the interlude, the sun came out. Everybody clapped and cheered. When the interlude ended, the sky went back to being cloudy again. Amazing.

After that, on a pedestrian-only street called St. Jean full of restaurants and shops, I was in a CD store (where else?) and I started to hear live music playing outside. I thought it was the festival, but I was too far away from any stage to be able to hear it. I looked outside and saw a semi-impromptu marching band playing while a huge crowd following behind. I went out and joined the crowd. I felt as if I was in a François Truffaut film. People sitting on the patios of the many restaurants were all watching us and them go by.

All the streets and architecture in Québec is marvelous. The street-lined trees are old and beautiful. All the houses where I live are older, at least 40 years old, and have this permanence. All of them have wooden porches. The streets are wide and there are pedestrian places.
I live in the middle of the city, the university to the west and Vieux-Québec to the east. Right next to the university are a series of three huge malls, all in a row. It's a shopaholic's paradise and nightmare at the same time.