Saturday 30 September 2023---The ferry carries us across the mouth of the Saguenay this morning, depositing us at Baie-Sainte-Catherine. We drive past St-Siméon to La Malbaie, and from there take the alternate coastal route, 362. Stop in Baie-Saint-Paul for lunch and a stroll around town.

The road from Baie-Saint-Paul to Quebec City is a very familiar one to me, past the ski areas of Le Massif and Mont-Sainte-Anne and the basilica at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, and along the increasingly developed corridor from there to town. I had some trouble finding a room for a Saturday night; I'd wanted to stay at the B&B next door to the microbrasserie on l'Île d'Orléans, but my inquiries went unanswered. I ended up choosing the Hôtel Ambassadeur in Beauport, where I stayed many times on bus trips. It's not an ideal location, but it's not bad, either, more or less in the middle of everything we intend to see.

Marc arrives late in the afternoon. I last saw him in Montreal, two years ago; before that, another two years, on our own Gaspé trip, before the pandemic. At my suggestion, we go for a pint at Griendel, in the Saint-Sauveur neighborhood. At Marc's suggestion, we have dinner and pints at Emporium, in Charlebourg. He drops us back at the hotel after.

I have remarked before on the suddenness with which Ron gets really tipsy, on the rare occasion that it happens. I'm a bit surprised when it happens this evening, as we haven't drunk all that much. I'm amused at first; in my experience, Ron is a very amiable drunk. But my casual (and incorrect) surmise that Lord Thomson of Fleet spelled his name with a p (as in psilocybin) sparks an embarrassingly passionate debate about something tangential and insignificant. It is possible, I suppose, that I too am a wee bit tipsy. I hope the rooms adjacent to us are unoccupied.