In my previous travel flashbacks and posts of interesting places I think people should consider travelling to, I have leaned towards the exotic, lesser known, and typically less accessible places in the world. As I was driving home along the south coast of the Saint Lawrence River from our trip to the East Coast a couple of months ago, it dawned on me that there were lots of places in Canada that I love visiting that I could write about. Many of these may or may not be on everyone’s radar but they are places that I find vibrant and exciting and worthy of a visit.
The Quebec City, Charlevoix, Tadoussac corridor is one of those places that I absolutely adore. When I speak to friends about going to this area, I am typically referring to it as a visit to the Charlevoix region. In fact, this corridor makes up parts of three tourism regions in the Province of Quebec. According to the Bonjour Quebec website, they are: Québec City and Region, the Charlevoix Region, and the Côte-Nord Region.
All three of these areas have so many interesting features and attractions they are worthy of individual visits. However, if you have never been to this area, I would suggest that you plan a trip that touches all three. This is very easy to do because there’s not a lot of driving involved. According to Google maps the drive between Quebec City and Tadoussac is only three hours long, or 215 km in length.
If you were to do a trip like this, over say a week, you would probably start at Quebec City and work your way eastward towards Tadoussac. For the purposes of this little revisit, I am going to start the trip in Tadoussac and work my way westward to Quebec City. I plan to give you a little taste of several potential stops along the way on this route.
There are so many interesting aspects to this part of the country that to provide you with a true “taste” I am going to split it into two separate posts. I will primarily be using my own travel photos as I normally do, but I will be sprinkling in a few others from official regional sites that give you a better sense of what these areas are all about. Yes, believe it or not, professional photographers do a much better job than I do of capturing the essence of these places.
The photos in this post, and others in this series, are best enjoyed on a desktop/laptop or in horizontal view on your iPad. There is an issue looking at them on cellphones which the tech department is working hard at fixing. I have made the photo so much smaller in this post to see if that helps.
Tadoussac is a small town sitting at the most south-eastern tip of the Côte-Nord Region on the St. Lawrence River at the mouth of the Saguenay River. It and most of the other places I will be referring to, are identified on this map.
One of the charming aspects of a visit to Tadoussac is that in order to get to the town you have to ride a small car ferry from the south side of the Saguenay River to the north side where the town sits. The ride is short, but there is enough time to leap out of the car and admire the view upriver and out into the Saint Lawrence – and take some selfies with a dramatic background.
The most famous landmark in Tadoussac is the Hotel Tadoussac. It is yet another one of those oh so delightful historical Canadian tourist hotels from a bygone era. And a great place to stay if you are overnighting. It appeared in the movie “Hotel New Hampshire” as the hotel with the same name.
Tadoussac is a tourist town, so there are lots of shops offering souvenirs and crafts, and several small, charming restaurants to eat in.
Tadoussac offers one of the best whale watching opportunities in Canada. This photo however, is of a bunch of. whale watchers about to embark I took in New Brunswick. 🙂
From Marine Mammal Interpretation Centre – After getting up close and personal with the whales you can find more about them at the Marine Mammal Interpretation Centrein town.
From Croisières AML – Another great boating outing is to travel up the Saguenay River Fjord on a day trip. You can either go for a few hours, or for a full day.
From Tadoussac Sand Dunes – The town and surrounding area are ripe with great outdoor experiences, from hiking and kayaking to a visit to these enormous sand dunes just on the outside of town.
One of the pleasing aspects of driving yourself over this route between Quebec City and Tadoussac is the lovely vistas that present themselves along the route. There are several sections where you are driving quite close to the Saint Lawrence, and others where you pass through beautiful hilly terrain. The drive itself is very easy along a well-established paved highway.
As you leave Tadoussac and head west towards Quebec City, the town of La Malbaie(Bad Bay) is a great place to spend a couple of days.
La Malbaie is home to another of Canada’s spectacular old Fairmont hotels, Le Manoir Richelieu. Not the cheapest hotel in the region, but certainly worth spending at least one night there.
The hotel sits high above the Saint Lawrence River and offers a spectacular view.
We don’t really frequent casinos – we went to the one in Rama, Ontario once and after losing $10 the Love-goddess declared it to be a pariah and we have never wagered any of our hard-earned funds in one since. 🙂 That notwithstanding, the one attached to the Manoir is much more like I imagine an elegant European casino to be – totally unlike the warehouse-like facilities I have seen in Canada.
We have stayed at Le Manoir Richelieu, but on our last visit to the area we stayed in this charming little resort-like venue. This was the view from our balcony. The tide appears to be out.
From Parc national des Hautes‑Gorges-de-la-Rivière‑Malbaie – Easily accessible from La Malbaie is the spectacularHautes-Gorges-de-la-Rivière-Malbaie National Park. We have never been there, but it is definitely on the list for the next time we are in the area.
From Google – When you leave La Malbaie and head off to your next destination, Baie-Saint-Paul, you need to divert off of the main highway and drive along the “St. Lawrence Route Panoramic Road”.
There are lots of many interesting spots to stop at along this route. The first one we pulled into was Les Ateliers Charlevoix, an arts and crafts retailer.
The “favorite cousin” looks very cosmopolitan as he poses for my shot of a section of the shop. It is hard to walk into this store without walking out with something lovely – we certainly didn’t manage it. 🙂
Next up was a stop at “Alpagas Charlevoix” to check out the critters, and to sort through all the clothing items made with alpaca wool in their boutique.
One final stop to wrap up the first part of this two-part series. When we drove by these two houses I had to get out and walk down the driveway and take a shot of the panorama in the distance. Can you imagine living here year-round and waking up to that spectacular view every morning?
Friday, December 3 – Next up: Baie-Saint-Paul, La Route des Saveurs, the road to Quebec, and Quebec City.
