What a lovely day, although it didn't start well! We hadn't set our alarm and woke up at 8am - we needed to be in the Theatre for our tour of Historic and New Quebec at 9.15am. While Tom was shaving I ducked up the stairs to the Kings Court on Deck 7 and picked 1/2 dozen danishes, and we ate those as we dressed!!

Our tour was really good. Our guide told us that there were 25,000 people on the wharf when we arrived (and they were all over the hill as well), and that Quebec (pronounced Kebec) stopped work as soon as the ship came into view on the river. She was sure her building was learning because everyone had rushed over to one side!! The tour was spoilt by dreadful traffic.

Our guide took the day off work to take our tour and I think everyone else did to come down to the wharf and look at the ship.

There was a demonstration outside our terminal by some people trying to negotiate a better pay deal, that held up all they tours until they organised another gangway at the back of the ship.

After our tour we returned to the ship for a nice lunch, then we went ashore to go shopping and look around. All the shop windows have signs in them welcoming the passengers to their city.

We shopped until 3.55pm when we decided we couldn't wait another 5 minutes to ring the girls. We had bought a $10 phonecard from the Tourist office this morning, so we woke the girls (6am their time) and it was great to talk to them. Shannon recognised my voice, even though I greeted her with "Bon jour ma petite" (everyone in Quebec speaks French, and a lot speak English). I sang happy birthday to Sophie and Charlotte. Sophie got 20/20 for a music project (on the clarinet of course). Jess had her graduation ceremony last night and came first in Maths and English, and received encouragement awards for Society & Culture, and Hospitality. She was also awarded the School Spirit Award. After we finished on the phone we walked up to a little wine bar to have ün bier"(the only French phrase Jess remembers) - they had a brand called Moosehead, so of course we had to have that and we drank a toast to her. It was a lovely beer. We continued on our sightseeing in this picturesque part of town and eventually made our way back to the boat.

Dinner was casual, and we drank a toast to Sophie and Charlotte for their birthdays with some more lovely Hunter Valley Shiraz. After dinner we collected our coats and went up on deck to watch our sail away. Thousands of people were on the docks and on roofs of buildings to see us off - it was wonderful.