The final port of call on our Québec intensive cruise back in September was Trois-Rivières, which apparently, among other things, is known for its black squirrel population.

Well, in fact, all of Québec has a significant population of black squirrels.

We have them here in Minnesota too, so they aren’t new to me, but I was wondering if I’d see any on our trip.  Sure enough, as soon as we walked off the ship in Trois-Rivières we saw one.

He wasn’t exactly posing for photos, but I managed to get a shot of the back of him.  He held some of the other cruise passengers enthralled as they’d never see a black squirrel before.

There was more to see in Trois-Rivières than black squirrels though, well … sort of.

Unfortunately, we were there on a Monday to find that the one museum that I really wanted to visit was closed.  That was Le Musée québécois de culture populaire, or Le Musée POP for short.

My Lonely Planet guidebook said that this museum included quirky exhibits featuring pop culture.  At one time they even had an exhibit on “the social significance of garage sales”.  Would that have been right up my alley or what?

Clearly I should have read the fine print and realized that the museum would be closed when we were there so that we had a back up plan.  Instead we just spent a couple of hours walking along the riverfront promenade  and through the oldest section of town along the Rue des Ursulines.

Trois-Rivières was founded in 1634, however, it was mostly destroyed by a fire in 1908, so the oldest section of town doesn’t date back any further than that.

The preponderance of wrought iron railings reminded me quite a bit of Charleston.

Some of them were quite elaborate.  I loved this next one with its weeping tree design.

I had to give this next house some demerits for not planting anything in that fantastic stone wall planter.

Wouldn’t that be spectacular filled with something?  Something as simple as an ivy, some impatiens (it was in shade), or even just some creeping jenny would be perfect.

I enjoyed checking out some of the interesting old houses in this area.

That’s kinda my jam.

But there were really only a block or two of those.

We eventually came upon a little crepe place called Le Sacristain and decided to stop and get something to eat.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that the food on our cruise was not very good.  Of course, I realize that since I had Covid for the last half of the trip, my opinion on the food should be taken with a grain of salt.  Also, most of my meals came from room service at that point too, so that made them even worse.  But Mr. Q wasn’t impressed with the food on the ship either.  The simple ham and cheese sandwich I had at Le Sacristain was absolutely delicious, and Mr. Q also really enjoyed his crepe.  So that tells me that you can’t blame the bad cruise food entirely on Covid.

In previous posts I’ve mentioned that we had spectacularly glorious weather nearly every day of our trip, but on this final day it started to rain shortly after noon and it continued for the rest of the day.  But that was OK, we needed to get our bags packed anyway.  Plus, I was still feeling pretty wiped out from the Covid.  So we headed back to the ship after our lunch ashore.

I can’t really give you an unbiased review of our overall experience on an Azamara cruise.  My experience was definitely sub-par having had covid for around half of our journey.  However, I can say that although we didn’t enjoy the food, we did enjoy sailing in this part of the world.

It was pretty magical to be floating along on calm waterways just enjoying the views.

But would I do it again?  Probably not.  That area of Canada was lovely, and I’d certainly recommend visiting.  But the cruise itself was rather expensive, and I’m not sure it was worth it.  In fact, Mr. Q and I may be avoiding cruises overall for a while (not including a cruise that I have already booked with my sister in February, but more on that in a future post).  We have realized that we definitely enjoyed our trip to the Brandywine Valley in May much more than this cruise, so we’re planning to do something similar to that next spring.  Fly to a major city, rent a car, stay in hotel suite with a little more space and just explore the surrounding area at our leisure.

We’re thinking about Chattanooga, Tennessee.  After all, it was named the friendliest city in the U.S. by Conde Nast last year.  Have any of you been?  If so, be sure to leave a comment with any recommendations for that area!