Quebec city bed and breakfast

We're spending a few nights in this bed and breakfast. In contrast to the plastic covered mattresses of our last place, this is luxury. The mattresses are huge, firm and soft. The floor has a thick rug, the shower is sparkling with fresh paint. And our hostess is so willing to talk to us, as if we're guests, not just paying guests. She offered to fetch us from the train station, is willing to lend us her bicycle, tells us we can sit in her garden, and I've even been picking her raspberries.

Over breakfast she tells us (there is another couple here) that Quebec is a very safe city, of only seven million people and that people leave their doors open because they have nothing worth stealing. So it sounds great until she tells us how high the taxes are, and they sound high. However the country does provide free health care and university education. She knows and tells us about Quebec history, and is passionately proud of her heritage. She is also very sociable because there are always people in her house, friends, a sister, a mother with her new baby, a neighbour.

Our hostess is busy petitioning the local authority to conserve the local area where many plots of land are up for sale, almost all to be sold by local religious bodies to pay off fines for the pedophilia scandals. The problem is that the plots will then be used to build a thousand condominiums, which will loose the character of the area, not to mention what it will do for house prices.