We wake up at 5. Jetlag seems to be nearly over! The next door Beaux-art museum opens at 10, so we have plenty of time to call the family and play some games. It’s raining and the snow is melting fast. We wade for 10 minutes through the melting snow and are the first ones to arrive. Locals have free access today (first Sunday of the month).
There is an exhibition of hyper realism. The statutes are very real indeed and we trick Zeno into thinking the museum guard is also a statute. Olga and Cleo try to stand still to trick other visiters that they are a statute. We have a lot of fun. Some statutes are explicit, like a woman giving birth and a six meter tall newborn.
The permanent collection consists of some contemporary paintings, a collection of Inuit art and modern furniture. Not too much, because a dependance is under construction.
We wade back home and have lunch before we get into the car to experience the First Nations history. First stop, however, is a water fall. The season with the melting snow raises our expectations, and it does not disapoint. The waterfall is wild.
Then we go to the Musee Huron-Wendat, showcasing the life of the indegious Huron-Wendat people. As they did not write, there’s not much preserved from their traditions and heritage. We listen to some children songs that were recorded, see their clothes and wicker baskets and watch a movie about one of their tales.
It’s not a big museum, so we continue quick with the Onhoüa Chetek8e in the same neighboorhoud, an open air museum about the Huron people, showing their housing, kanoos, tipi’s. The kids have fun jumping with their boots in the wet snow. It is no coincidence it is here where Zeno manages to fall twice in the water snow. His trousers are wet and his socks, knitted by Oma Miriam, too.
We continue to Chutes de la Chaudière. Doubting if Zeno can go out again in his wet trousers, but they seem rather damp than wet. So we give it a try and beat the misty air and icy grounds to check out the 242 meter wide and 35 meter high water fall. A true giant. We see big ice floes approaching the abyss and falling down in pieces.
We want to check out the other side too, Tim decides he prefers his own pace instead of the pace of his three year old son. After walking down fast, he turns left while giving a minor sign to the rest of his family 50 meters behind him. Olga and kids shuffle carefully over the icy ground and continue straight. They realise Tim went another way when they approach a cliff without a bridge. Shuffeling back up, the family gets reunited. Together they cross the bridge and after a lot of slippering and sliding through the water snow they arrive on the other side of the water fall.
As Zeno is tired and Cleo gets cold (finally, this kid never gets cold!) we shuffle back to the bridge and try a short cut to get to our car. The short cut ends at the bottom of a high hill. Climbing up is the ultimate slip challenge. Special compliments to the kids who quickly learned to use tree branches to pull themselves up. When we are on the top of the hill and climb over a fence, another toursit ask Tim for the way to the bridge. We wonder what it is that makes us look like a reliable as they surely saw us climbing over that fence.
Tim tries to shoot the waterfall from the air but the batteries of his remote are empty and telling him to land. So we have just one picture.
We drive back home and eat spinach hotchpotch while Tim recharged his batteries and goes out to shoot the city from the sky with full batteries to get some better shoots. The sunset is underwhelming and he too returns to the warm comforts of our apartment calling it another cold and wet day.
