Unlike the rest of Canada where all the signs are bilingual, when you travel anywhere in Quebec, it helps to know some French. If you don’t, best to at least master the phrase, “Parlez-vous l’Anglais?” and hope that the answer is Yes. Often the answer is, “Yes, a little.” Then you can have a contest to see who is better at understanding the other person’s language.

In any case, make as much of an attempt as you can and you’ll get points for trying.

In 2016, while cycling around Prince Edward Island, we took the ferry to the Magdalen Islands, which are in Quebec. In 2017 we cycled to Montreal and then explored the Eastern Townships. Last summer we visited Quebec City and cycled around Lac St. Jean.

Our trip this year reinforced all that we love about this French province.

Let’s start with the food. First, Quebec has the best soft-serve ice cream in the world. I would have it every day if I could.

What makes it so great? First of all, when you order any flavor of soft serve, you are guaranteed the richest, creamiest ice cream you have ever tasted. Then – as long as you order vanilla – you have a choice of at least a dozen different toppings. Dark chocolate, salted caramel, maple, oreo, dark chocolate mint are just some of your choices.

With only two days left on our trip, I told Rob I had to have some ice cream before we left Quebec. We didn’t find any until we had just a couple miles left before arriving at our destination. We’d been riding about five miles in the rain and hadn’t put on our rain gear. We were soaking wet, but we had to stop. Dark chocolate dip for me and a strawberry sundae for Rob.

Next, there are crepes, which pop up often on menus in Quebec. I love crepes. I had them twice for breakfast with fruit, once for dinner with seafood.

Then there is maple syrup everything. It was included with crepes for breakfast – not an extra $2 like in the U.S. Maple syrup was an option for an ice cream dip. (I gave up my favorite dark chocolate to try it. It was delicious; I had it twice.) We had an appetizer of scallops in a maple glaze sauce and dessert of sugar pie made with maple syrup.

Maybe this isn’t just a Quebec thing. After all, the maple leaf is Canada’s flag.

We also saw Nordic shrimp on menus. These are the little tiny shrimp. When we stopped for a late lunch in L’Anse-au-Griffon they had both lobster and shrimp rolls on the menu. We can get lobster rolls any time, so we decided to try the shrimp rolls. I savored every bite.

A few days later when we stopped for lunch we were happy to see shrimp rolls on the menu again. Just as all lobster rolls are never the same, so too with shrimp rolls. This one was not quite in the same league as the first, but still delicious.

Poutine is often mentioned as a Canadian dish, not unique to Quebec. It’s basically french fries topped with gravy and cheese curds. I always enjoy the first few bites but then as I dig down to the soggy potatoes at the bottom, I grow tired of it. Nevertheless, when in Canada, if I can get myself in the mood, I’ll usually order poutine at least once, especially if I find a unique twist on it. This one came with nordic shrimp and a white sauce. The first few bites were pretty good but then it got boring.

I’ll finish this section on food by noting that every time we ordered breakfast, it came with a small side of fresh fruit. Like the maple syrup, never at an additional cost.

In Quebec, not only is the food fun. While we didn’t find the provincial parks that are scattered throughout Prince Edward Island, we did come across beautifully landscaped rest areas all along our route. So many tempted us to stop, but we knew that when it was time for a break, we’d find one, just as unique and lovely as the ones we’d passed.

Our first day out we came to at a charming spot overlooking the town of Matapedia across the river.

A few days later we stopped at a rest area that came with both a view and a Little Free Library that even had a selection of books in English, perfect for me since I had finished the book I’d brought and was in desperate need of a new one.

On Day 8 it had just started raining when we came to a small town with a visitor center and a lovely shelter right next door. The visitor center had hot water for tea, exactly what we were hoping to find. (And the woman inside spoke English and told us about a restaurant in the next town, which was where we had our most delicious shrimp rolls while we watched the rain pour down.)

Enjoy the selection of a few others we stopped at. I wanted to stop at all of them, but then we’d never get anywhere.

As much as I appreciated the beautiful rest areas, it did occur to me that some of the money spent on them could maybe be put to better use maintaining the roads. While they weren’t the worst we’ve experienced, neither were they the best. The biggest hazard were the frequent fissures we encountered, sometimes just along the white line of the shoulder, other times hard to dodge when they were throughout the entire lane. I caught my front tire once or twice and that worried me. It was like getting caught in a railroad track. Some of the cracks had plants growing in them and others were deep enough to destroy a wheel. I told Rob not to follow too closely on the downhills so if I went down he wouldn’t go with me. Vigilance was key every day.

The often crappy conditions made us appreciate when we came upon smooth sections of the highway, which we did often enough.

As I’ve already mentioned, if you are going to travel in Quebec, it’s a good idea if you know at least a smattering of French. You can’t even assume that the people who work in visitor centers will know English. Some of them don’t. And if you want to call ahead to see if you can get a reservation at a motel, there’s not going to be a translate button you can press to get the English version of what the person on the other end of the is saying. Frustrating? At times, yes. But having the opportunity to dust off the high school French that I never had a chance to practice on real French people is great fun for me. Mostly I can make myself understood. Mostly I don’t understand what the other person is saying. That’s part of the adventure.