ISER and Québec City, Pt. II

Man, I'm going to have to step up the pace here.

Fortunately, I've said most of what I have to say about Québec City. It was beautiful, it was expensive, the weather was perfect – really, I can just post pictures. Mostly of the group-sponsored events, too:

The Château Frontenac, as viewed from the dinner cruise down the River St. Lawrence. The first one was taken on the way out; the second was taken only about 20 minutes later.

It was a very pretty cruise.

I should also add that it was delicious. I've never been to French-speaking Canada before; I was surprised by (1), how many people speak no English at all (and scoff at my grade-school French); and (2), how very French the food was. Butter, cream, fondue, raclette, crêpes everywhere... I lost about two kilos in the first few weeks in Germany, and gained it all back in four days. Plus, I don't eat pork or beef. Usually this means I can just say "I don't eat red meat" and be fine – but this trip had edge cases. I ended up being offered boar, elk, and horse! (Note: horse is absolutely freaking delicious.)

The third sponsored event <!!> was a dinner at the Manoir Montmorency, which has a footpath to Montmorency Falls. This pano was taken from a wooden overlook that juts out through the trees...

The wooden overlook, seen from the bridge; and the falls themselves. It's almost impossible to capture the size and noise of Water that is Getting Serious. Waterfalls are amazing.

The final day of the conference, I ended up with a group of people going to dinner with the Local Activities Chair, the guy who's a prof at Université Laval. Dinner segued into drinks at this "place I know," which, over the course of the evening, gradually segued into "the conference organizers buying rounds of shots for the grad students." I ended up in a tipsy and very impassioned argument with a post-doc from UBC about whether machine learning could be used to tell whether a fish was an Asian Carp or not, based on accelerometer readings once it had swallowed a computer.

I took the last day of the trip to explore the city, as I often do. I had a friend again (NTD), this time someone I knew from RSS last year; we bought two pints of incredibly ripe strawberries from the farmer's market, and walked around for hours, stopping at a microbrewery and a busy deli, generally admiring the randomness of being Somewhere Else. Conclusion: Québec City is very picturesque, but not otherwise all that interesting...

At some point we decided to follow the sound of running water. This was just tucked in between some buildings, with trees on three sides. Strawberries were eaten. Life was discussed. Mild sunburns were obtained.

I present unto you: broccosheep!

Then, on the way back to Germany, US Air told me they were going to strand me in Chicago overnight. I managed to ask if they could strand me in Philadelphia instead, to which the ticket agent said, "Uh... sure?" So I was home by 11pm, that night, and stayed for a good meal and some concentrated relaxing on the back porch before catching an 8:30pm plane the next day. It was a wonderful and wonderfully timed little reprieve. It never hurts to ask for what you want.