Quebec City, Day Five: Still with the Hyundai.

Lac-Megantic

Our car was where we parked it in a parkade last night. Yay! It made today's trip possible. Once we were on the road heading to something that Michael couldn't pronounce but said it sounded like the place where the horrible train crash was a few years ago, but it wasn't, I opened the glove box to root around and found the wallet and sunglasses of the last occupant of the vehicle. The sunglasses were nice and there was $130 cash in the wallet. I called Enterprise to explain what I had found and gave them the woman's name and asked them to call her to tell her we had her wallet in case she hadn't cancelled her cards yet. They said that was fine, and we could just drop off the wallet with them, which I wasn't super keen again.

Lac-Megantic

BECAUSE I AM A NICE PERSON I looked up the address of this woman and, hilariously enough, it was about a kilometre from our hotel so I figured instead of dropping the wallet off with the car tomorrow, and the money mysteriously going missing instead of getting back to the owner, that we would swing by her place on the way home and deliver the goods ourselves.
But back to the road trip. Once we stopped fighting and it became clear that I reign supreme as a navigator (okay, my Google Assistant does everything but I take all the credit) I started to realize that the place that we were heading was, in fact, the Lac-Megantic. Michael felt bad because he didn't want it to seem like we were showing up to gawk, so I read more about it, and after the disaster in 2013 that mayor of the town asked tourists not to abandon them because that town was a huge tourist hub.

Notre-Dame-des-Bois

So we went and it was interesting and sad and resilient. It's a nice little community on the lake, and so much of the building is practically brand new. Of the 39 buildings still standing in 2014, all but three had to be demolished because of petroleum contamination. The kick ass juxtaposition was that when we were wandering near the site of the crash, we saw a guy installing a charging station for electric vehicles.
We stopped in at the tourist centre and they gave us a brochure that took us through a couple of kilometres of the city. We saw their church and the public art on display to honor and remember the people that died, and to focus on the strength and togetherness of their community.
After that we went to Sherbrooke. Sherbrooke seemed like it could have been really cool in that it's a very historic town and the building are in great shape, but there were also a lot of empty stores, an actual sex shop where the women were outside on the steps having a break before getting back to the... sex? And a super crazy guy wacked out on meth. We had had higher expectations and thought we might hang around, but then we saw a cat in a park catch and eat a bird and that pretty much sealed it. Given the student population there - and the associated professions that they employ - it likely was quiet and sketchy because school's out, kind of like Athens, Georgia was when we were there a couple of summers ago.

Sherbrooke

Had a quick snack break in Notre-Dame-des-Bois which is in the Appalachians, and is one of the highest towns in Quebec (thanks, Wiki!).
We randomly stopped in Drummondville at Resto La Muse and had a really friendly server and an excellent meal, so that perked things up a bit. And then we walked around a bit and the town really grew on us. Working class, not pretentious, but a lot of nice looking restaurants, a cool park, and nice town square, a jogging group that ran past us as we stuffed our faces, and just a nice mix of people.
Michael forgot his glasses at home (like, North Vancouver home) and has been wearing his prescription sunglasses most of the time. Sad for me, because some clouds rolled in and it was getting dark so I got to drive the remaining 65 kilometres into the city, and also try and find this woman's place which is in the old city which is like driving in facking Brugges or something. But we did it even though traffic was pretty chaotic and there is an incredible amount of work happening on the highways around here. At nine o'clock at night, apparently.

Drummondville

So! There is a road closure leading up to where this woman, Evelyn, lives and it's all convoluted and one way streets so I park the car. We have to hoof it up the 1,001 steps to get up into the old city and we're wandering around, studying the GPS and lo, we find her place. I hear someone talking inside so I think we're in luck. I knock on the door and hear a little dog start barking and then someone trying to shush it. I wait. I knock again, and the door opens. The young woman is on the phone and is holding her dog as the door opens. I felt kind of bad because it was just after 9.30pm and she didn't have a keyhole to look out, so it might have made her anxious. I smile and show her her wallet and her sunglasses and hand them to her. She asked where I found them and I said "In the car. In the rental car you drove" and she said "Ah, thank you" and then shut the door.
Dude. Really? Someone brings you back your wallet with all your cards and ID and cash, and your Ray Bans and you can't maybe call your friend back and and be a bit more effusive? Do I expect too much?
Sacre bleu!