(no subject)

[metawidget]

The week before last, I went to the annual meeting of the SSC and made a short presentation on a statistical disclosure control procedure. The rest of the time, I listened to what other people were up to, met statisticians from near and far, soaked up the conference atmosphere and explored Quebec a bit. I took a few photos on a couple of walks through the older parts of the city and along the riverbank:

The building where most of the sessions were

A ship going by on the St. Lawrence

The stairs the British would have loved to have

Security under the stairs

A runner scared the robin off for a bit

The port on the Quebec side of the river

There were dozens of signs like this, in different colours and sizes, around cliffs, moats and other dangerous things on the Plains of Abraham. I suspect several jurisdictions collaborated.

One moat, part of the Citadelle, which had such signage.

The National Assembly.

A cannon pointed in the general direction of the National Assembly.

The city wall.

Robert Bourassa, our geekiest-looking premier ever. He had a bas-relief picture of a hydro dam in his hand.

Réné Levesque. He's looking like a zombie or a golem here.

Jean Lesage. His statue felt tall and fatherly.

A sculpture in tribute to the priests and nuns who were the education system for much of Quebec's history (with decidedly mixed results).

A sculpture of a logger rolling logs down a river, bursting out of an alley. I was ambushed by several sculptures around the city; I liked that!

random warned me about scientologist evangelists on the prowl; I found them on the boardwalk (and did my best to stay out of their path, but took a picture — I feel no guilt about putting on my anthropologist cap for a few minutes).

There is an elevator on a slope from the lower city to the walled part of the old city. $2 gets you one way; both ends are basically gift shops but the view is nice, and it's less scary than the windy road down.

Samuel de Champlain gets a pretty exuberant bare-breasted angel with a trumpet guarding his pedestal.

Another sculpture ambush from an alleyway!

The very artsy sink at the very tasty Hobbit restaurant (thanks for the recommendation, denkizero: the food was excellent, too!)

This alleyway, leading to the terrasse at the Sacrilège bar, had no sculptures, but the paint job was wild!

Today, Elizabeth's adult students had a recital along with other students from the music school she teaches at. I've heard the piano accompaniment to some of the songs pretty regularly lately; it was fun to hear the students supply the vocals, and put another face or two to names. Afterwards we walked the length of South Keys, getting some pants for me and some food for both of us, and ran into one of my favourite developers and her boyfriend, who were shopping for nice ways to embarrass his daughter at her bachelorette. I like running into people in new contexts; I hope his daughter is ready to deal with realizing that her smiling, grey-haired parent and parent-partner aren't scandalized by verb/body-part dice...

Comments

[asimplelife.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I enjoyed the walking tour. Two photos aren't showing up on the LJ post but they are on the DW post.

[metawidget]

I found a couple of HTML typos after posting and fixed them at DW; I imagine the auto-crosspost gremlins are working hard to move the fixes over to LJ soonish...

[denkizero.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked it! ...and glad you caught a picture of that sink, I've been trying to explain its intricacies to people at work and they didn't get it at all despite a 3d doodle of it. :)

The sign is so perfect, I want one.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I will comment to say the cannon is actually a mortar.

:)