Hello.
Here is my brief datasheet based on five days in Québec City. I hope it
is useful and well-received.
The city is known as "Québec City" in America but simply "Quebec" in the
province. They use context or else specify whether they mean the city or
the province. I'm going to call it Québec.
I spent a weekend in Montreal once and loved it—but in my
opinion whatever is good about Montreal is present in Québec and
whatever is bad about it is absent in Québec.
Scotian's thread contains very good
historical and cultural background which applies to Québec (City)
probably moreso than to Montreal. I really liked this city, especially
so given that it is in North America. I know I will be back there.
Québec offers, first and foremost of course, beautiful, stylish,
sociable women. The city's architecture is utterly charming, the
streets are clean, and I saw no evidence of crime or destitution that
would normally present in a medium- or large-sized city in North
America. In fact, I was there during their annual Winter Carnavale, and
can attest that despite freezing cold weather, good cheer and camaraderie
were palpable. The drinking age is 18 which is
great—even if you're
not looking for an 18 year old, their presence seems to have a mellowing
effect on the twenty-somethings, like they feel the need to act chill,
laid-back, and more mature than the teens.
I was well-received almost everywhere I went by both men and women.
People here are less accustomed to tourists and stag groups from New
York than in Montreal, so I got a lot of "You came to
Québec
from
New York??? But why?" This is an awesome vibe to be in and all I
had to do was show up—a well-documented feature of second-tier cities.
However, I advise RVF operators not to be too brazen in front of Quebecer men
when gaming chicks they regard as being in their social circle. Once or
twice I felt that if I would have come off as being too deliberate about
working on girls, the guys would decide to kick my ass for poaching
their countrywomen—and I really can't blame them.
Logistically, the place is pretty solid. Except the University, everything
is concentrated downtown. It's very cold in winter, but you can suck it
up and walk wherever you want to go. I couchsurfed, which I will
definitely not do next time I'm there—too many girls live with their
parents and this cost me bangs. The one bang I actually got took place
at the university dorm. I imagine AirBnB would be great in this city
and if not there are plenty of street-scale hotels in the area so you
don't have to stay in the less-bounceable-to mega-hotels on the big
boulevard.
The "Strip" is Grand Allée, which runs along a ridge overlooking the
"Plains of Abraham," a large park between the city and the river. Here
I'll mention Dagobert, the club everyone was talking about when I was
there: I don't really do clubs (or lines/crowds/large covers), so I
didn't go in, but if that's your thing this looked like a good spot for
it, featuring hot chicks freezing their titties off on line in front of
this castle-looking building that could have as easily been made into a
haunted house.
Now for a couple of venues. I went in more places than I will list here;
these are mostly ones that were recommended to me at one point or
another and so are apparently considered notable around town. Fact is
that the bar culture here is pretty sweet, and because downtown is so
compact you will not have a hard time finding the crowd you want, be it
college girls, rockers, swanky types, or whatever.
Pub Ozone: Top of the hill on Grand Allée, a college dive bar, type of
place we are probably all familiar with, serving large quantities of
Labatt Bleu to poorly-dressed college kids. I didn't find the time to
work this place but it made me nostalgic for drunken nights in my old
university town, letting the booze do the work. I expect they have a
weeknight special that packs in the hot co-eds. Get em.
Les Voûtes Napoléon (The Vaults of Napoleon):
This is your nostalgic Québecer bar on Grand Allée. People of
all ages singing along to whatever the Québécois equivalent of Journey's
Don't Stop Believin' is. They had live acoustic music going when I was
there, a pretty girl, the salt of Québec's earth, up there plucking
French Canadian heartstrings. I didn't pull here but everyone was
friendly as hell, I got numbers from a pair of pretty
late-twentysomethings, and I see no reason why one couldn't cash in on
the bonhomie here. I also realized that I couldn't take solid English
for granted in this town, which for some reason hadn't fully occurred to
me on the way in.
Saturday.
Ninkasi: I stumbled into this place in late afternoon when it was nearly
empty, talked to the bartender for some leads, and then went up to two
nineteen-year-olds at a table and asked to join them. I ended up back
there later. There's a stage, a hard-rock crowd, if you are effective in
this environment there were just enough normal-looking, i.e. not
leather-bound, pierced, et cetera) girls to make it worth while. (If you
actually like that sort of thing, this place is perfect for you.)
Ninkasi has a second bar and terrace away from the stage. It had a
foosball table, a useful prop for me. The crowd is a little on the
alternative side, and though obviously I'm not posting about a gay bar,
there were a significant number of homosexuals present. It's here that I
eventually got my bang, a college chick with an unsightly piercing but solid
otherwise.
Sacrilege: Word is when Québec collectively told the Church to fuck off,
they put this place across the street from a small old parish church and
gave it a cheeky name. Irony is, this is basically a homey neighborhood
bar, not by any means the most sacrilegious place in town. I went in
with the girls I'd met earlier; without them this would be a tough venue
to break in to. Everyone knows each other and the music is not so loud as to
break up big groups, etc. There were a lot of beta hangers-on here, guys
several years older than the girls hoping that something would happen.
When one of the girls I'd come in with rose to go home I stood and kissed her
dramatically. This earned me a small round of applause from that corner
of the bar but I sensed there were a few guys there who would rather
have kicked my ass. I look younger than I am and that might have helped
me. I guess I'm saying make sure you've won the crowd over before you
pull something brash. Anyway, she left, I made out with another high
school chick, a slutty little number who matter-of-factly said she couldn't
take me home because of her parents. I kicked myself for not having
better logistics here but you won't make that mistake.
(funny side note: I got a date with the first girl I kissed. (She demurred—
"I'm only nineteen"). Turns out she was on stage that first night at Les
Voûtes Napoléon, which I didn't put together at first.)
Star Bar, Tuesday:
I was watching the Rangers play the Canadiens in a bar on Grand Allée
and started chilling with two brothers from Ontario who had come to town
so one of them could take the test for the fire department. I knew there
must be a Tuesday night special somewhere that drew the college crowd.
These guys were amped up about Star Bar, near the University (so, not
downtown). We split a cab there. The two guys were well-built and enthusiastic
about chasing tail but they turned out to be mostly talk. One clung to a prior
female acquaintance that I don't think he'd ever banged. I did most of the
approaches and when the other guy would approach, he came off clownishly.
Anyway: I don't recommend this place. The bouncers were pretty nosy and
aggressive, and the girls fairly standoffish. They were young,
self-absorbed and mostly in to dancing with each other, an attitude
which I'm used to in the US but had not seen in Québec until that night.
We got two sets to sit at tables with us but they were not serious about
hooking up. But you may have better luck solo or with better wingmen, or
without the pressure of it being your last night in town and needing to
get the SNL. There
were plenty of nubile girls there, and as a
medium-sized city I'm not sure what clearly superior options you would
have for a Tuesday night.
So, though this post was based on less than a week in the target city, I
hope it whets your interest in what I consider a little gem of a place
in northeastern North America.
