Canada - Day Two (National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec - Montreal Museum of Fine Arts - National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa)

It will be an exciting day today - seeing three museums in Canada:


Up for an early breakfast, and then a nice stroll around Old Quebec - Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec, and then around the park overlooking the River, then off to the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (both French and English are spoken here, but French is primary in Québec Province):


There were two nice paintings:
"The Rapids, Montmorency River", 1860, by Otto Reinhold Jacobi:


"Saint-Charles Lake", 1864, by Robert Scott Duncanson:


Then 2-1/2 hours down the road to The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Using Google Maps, you can see that there is quite a bit of spaghetti roads getting into Montreal!

add on road construction/repair, and this is taking longer than I had hoped.

Beautiful pieces include
"Saint Paul's from the South", 1898, by Albert Goodwin


"Storm at Sea", about 1765, by Francesco Guardi


"Interior of San Marco, Venice", about 1740-1745, by Canaletto


"The Monuments of Paris", 1788, by Hubert Robert


"St. Laurent Tower with St. Ouen in the Background", 1872, by Thomas Colman Dibdin


We left Montreal and headed down the road to Ottawa, and the National Gallery of Canada


because we got there at 4:45 (closing at 5!), Wendy did not want to "hold me back", so we only bought one ticket. I ran and saw:
"St. Mark's and the Clock Tower, Venice", c. 1735-1737, by Canaletto


"The Campo di Rialto and S. Giacomo di Rialto, Venice", c. 1740-1760, by Canaletto


"The Church of S. Maria della Salute, Venice", c. 1780-1785, by Francesco Guardi


The best-2-of-4 by Claude Monet are:
"A Stormy Sea", c. 1884


"Rock Needle Seen through the Porte d'Aval, Etretat", 1886


The best of the "Canadian Artists" section are:
"Sunrise on the Saguenay, Cape Trinity", 1880, by Lucius R. O'Brien


"Shawinigan Falls", 1869, by Allan Edson


and there is a Thomas Cole:
"Tomb of General Brock, Queenston Heights, Ontario", 1830


Twenty minutes south of Ottawa, we stayed at the "Ramada Ottawa on the Rideau" - it was just great!

Music today (I listened to albums):

Buffalo Springfield - Retrospective (1969)


Rush - Retrospective II (1997)


Bryan Adams - Reckless (1984)


R.E.M. - Reckoning (studio album and live cd) (1984)


The Grateful Dead - Reckoning (live acoustic) (1981)


Canadian Neil Young was in Buffalo Springfield; both Rush and Bryan Adams are Canadian, so it is good to give them their due today.