One of the best views of Québec City is from the water; take a ferry ride across the St. Lawrence river from the base of the old city across to Lévis. (A round-trip is a relaxing half-hour at most.)

Looking back at Québec, you'll agree with Charles Dickens' 19th-century description: "The impression made upon the visitor by this Gibraltar of America, its giddy heights, its citadel suspended, as it were, in the air; its picturesque steep streets and frowning gateways; and the splendid views which burst upon the eye at every turn, is at once unique and lasting.”

[North America's fate as a mostly English-dominated land-mass was determined here in the 1759, at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Whoever ended up controlling these heights would end up controlling access into the interior of the continent...And the rest is history. But the French language lives on, alive and well, in Québec.]