Se déplacer si vous s'il vous plaît (move over please)

We spent the day Friday walking through Old Quebec. The buildings and architecture are fantastic. Everything seems to be at a slower pace. The narrow streets are easily shared with vehicles and pedestrians. I don’t think there were even traffic lights or crosswalks on the old streets. As a matter of fact it was easier to get a vehicle to move over for you than some pedestrians, people just walk on either side of the sidewalk and don’t move over. I did an experiment and decided I would walk straight and just see how close people will get before they move. I walked on the rightmost third of the sidewalk and (to be sure I was on my own side) and refused to move. I actually smacked shoulders with a woman in a party of 5 who were spread across the sidewalk. … Okay, that was a stupid thing to blog about but it was a very noticeable thing to me and I just had to say it.

Because the streets are so narrow and were made with horse and buggy in mind, there really isn’t a lot of parking room – especially for a big mondo truck like we have. We found street parking with a maximum 2 hours. The digital parking meter was flashing something which was of course in French, so we just started plugging coins in. Well only about every third coin actually registered any time (3 minutes per 25 cents) We had an hour and 7 minutes by the time the four of us all ran out of change. We decided it would be cheaper to risk a parking ticket. We risked. We lost. It cost thirty seven dollars. Ok, it didn’t cost, because I have no intention of paying it. I think I’ll return the ticket with a letter when I get home.