Soldiers, smoke signals and skins.

I don't know whether they were trying to make me feel at home today but Quebec Tourism took me to see something that looked familiar this morning. They have a changing of the guard every day at 10am at the Citadel. Quebec City gets 4.6 million visitors a year and most of them seemed to be here this morning. We whizzed by and headed for something a tad exotic. Just a 20 minute drive outside town is the Huron Village.

Huron Village sign

Here you can wander the reconstructed village with its long house, smoking house, sweat lodge and Huron guides, who are happy to pose for a photograph. Try the bannock bread in the restaurant.

Guides at the Huron Village

Then on to the Hotel Museé Premieres Nations (First Nations Hotel and Museum) which is based on a sweat lodge and long house design. It's pretty high-end with animal skins, antlers and native art throughout.

Animal skins on your bed 

 The bedrooms have a beaver pillow and fox furs draped around - I just imagine vegetarians loving that one - and the bar has a canopy made of antlers. You can buy a beaver pillow in the hotel shop if you're interested. 

Bar in the Huron-Wendat hotel

They also have their own beer, brewed especially for the hotel, which they must know is the way to an Englishwoman's heart. God bless them.

Museum entrance

You can check out the village where the Huron now live - where the road signs are in the Wyandot language as well as French. Just as well I wasn't driving, really.

Stop sign in native language

Smoke signals

More pictures on Dear England, Love Canada's Facebook page
For more on Quebec City go to Bonjour Quebec and Quebec City
Read more on my next blog post

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