Quebec 7 Day Itinerary: Montreal, Quebec City and Charlevoix

About 1h15, 16 Canadian dollars for the self-guided visit, open Monday to Saturday from 9am to 4pm and Sunday from 12.30pm. The 747 bus takes 25 minutes from the airport, and the basilica is a ten minute walk from most hotels in Old Montreal.

Inside it does not look like just another neo Gothic church: the vault is deep blue and scattered with gold stars, and the altarpiece is carved walnut covered in gold leaf. The stained glass breaks with convention and tells the story of Montreal rather than biblical scenes, a demand from the priest who commissioned it in 1929.

At night the same nave hosts AURA, a projection show by Moment Factory, for 37 dollars. Worth it if you like mapped projection; if not, the daytime visit covers what matters. All Masses are in French.

Quick stop, 30 minutes, free, three blocks east of the basilica and downhill. It was a public market in 1804 and is now a stone ramp covered in terraces, portrait artists and buskers, with the Nelson column at the top.

City Hall stands at the top, and its balcony is where De Gaulle shouted the 1967 line that Quebec still argues about. Carry on down the far side to the river.

About an hour, free, at the foot of Place Jacques-Cartier. It is 2.5 km of converted quays turned into a promenade, with a Ferris wheel, an urban beach and the old grain silos behind.

The recent addition is the Marche des Ecluisiers, a public market at the mouth of the Lachine Canal, with food stalls and tables facing the water: the best first dinner of the trip, cheaper and livelier than the terrace restaurants on the square. After a long flight, this is a good place to end the day.

About 1h15, free, and the first stop of the day because it is the highest: from here the route only goes downhill and north. Take bus 11 from Mont-Royal metro, or walk up the Olmsted path, a 30 minute climb.

The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, of Central Park, and the terrace is named after the Huron-Wendat chief who negotiated the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701. From the railing you see downtown, the St Lawrence and, on a clear day, the Adirondacks in the United States.

Quick stop, 45 minutes, free, walking down from the park along avenue du Parc or one metro stop to Mont-Royal. It is the spine of the Plateau, with independent shops, secondhand bookshops, thrift stores and terraces, closed to cars in stretches over the summer.

What catches the eye is not the shops but the houses: iron staircases climbing the outside of each facade, a 19th century way of fitting more flats on a lot without paying tax on an internal stair. Today it is the visual signature of the neighbourhood.

About 1h30, free, a 15 minute walk north of the Plateau. This is the district of game studios, artist workshops and green alleys, the back lanes between blocks that residents have turned into gardens.

It is also home to St-Viateur and Fairmount, the two bakeries that have been fighting over the best bagel in Montreal since the 1950s. The bagel here is boiled in honey water and baked in a wood-fired oven, thinner and sweeter than the New York version, and it comes out of the oven 24 hours a day. Buy half a dozen warm and eat them on the street, which is how it is done.

About 1h15, free, in Little Italy, a 15 minute walk from Mile End or one metro stop. It has run since 1933 and is where Quebec growers sell direct.

Go hungry and without a list. In late summer and autumn the stalls fill with squash, corn, wild mushrooms and the small apples that become ice cider. There are cheesemongers with the raw milk cheeses Quebec produces, maple syrup stands and counters to eat at on the spot. It is the best cheap lunch in Montreal.

About 45 minutes, free, 1h20 from Montreal on Highway 40. Pick the rental car up on the morning of this day and not before: for the first two days it would only be a parking bill.

This is Canada national Marian shrine, on the bank of the St Lawrence. The octagonal basilica of 1964 sits on the lawn like a landed craft, and inside it holds 125 stained glass windows by Jan Tillemans that set the concrete alight when the sun hits. Beside it, in stone, survives the small 1714 chapel, the oldest church in Canada still standing on its original site.

Quick stop, 45 minutes, free, ten minutes from the shrine in the centre of Trois-Rivieres. The 1908 fire took 800 buildings in the city and stopped at this street.

What survived is a whole block of the French regime: stone houses with pitched roofs, the 1697 Ursuline monastery with its dome, and the Manoir Boucher-de-Niverville, from around 1730. You can walk it in twenty minutes and have lunch downtown before moving on. It is 1h20 from here to Quebec City.

About an hour, free if you only walk the terrace, in late afternoon. Leave the car at the hotel and do not touch it again until day 5: the walled city is entirely walkable.

The Frontenac is an 1893 hotel built by the Canadian railway, and it is said to be the most photographed hotel in the world. You do not have to stay there to go in: the lobby is open and the first floor bar serves anyone.

Terrasse Dufferin, the wooden deck beside it, runs 425 metres along the clifftop, looking over the river, over Levis on the far bank and over the ships working up the St Lawrence. In winter the wooden toboggan slide down the terrace has run since 1884.

About 1h15, free, down from the Frontenac by funicular or the Breakneck Stairs. Start early: after 11am the street fills with passengers off the cruise ships that dock just below.

It is the oldest shopping street in North America, with 17th century stone houses pressed against the cliff, artisan shops and the Fresque des Quebecois, a 420 square metre mural that pretends to be a facade with balconies and figures from the city history.

Quick stop, 30 minutes, free, one block from Petit-Champlain. This is where Samuel de Champlain raised the first dwelling, and the square is the literal birthplace of the city.

Notre-Dame-des-Victoires church, from 1688, is the oldest stone church in Canada, and inside hangs a model ship, an ex voto left by sailors. The bust of Louis the Fourteenth in the middle of the square is a copy: the original became a diplomatic dispute and went back to France.

About 45 minutes, free entry, uphill from Place-Royale into the upper town, a ten minute climb. It is the first parish church north of Mexico, founded in 1647, burned and rebuilt three times.

Two things to look for: the gilded baldachin over the altar, crowned by a canopy that imitates the one in St Peter in Rome, and the crypt, where four governors of New France and the bishops of Quebec are buried. The Holy Door on the facade, opened in 2013, is the only one outside Europe.

About 1h30, 22 Canadian dollars, ten minutes on foot from the cathedral along rue Saint-Louis. The visit is guided only, lasts an hour and includes the Royal 22e Regiment museum, because the fortress is still an active military base.

The British took thirty years, from 1820 to 1850, to raise this stone star on the highest point of Cap Diamant, against an American invasion that never came. From 1 September to May the hours are 10am to 5.30pm. The changing of the guard, with red tunics and bearskin caps, runs in summer only.

About an hour, free, right beside the Citadel. It is 98 hectares of grass on the clifftop, and it is where locals run, cycle and cross country ski in winter.

The battle of 13 September 1759 lasted around twenty minutes and decided the fate of New France: both generals, Wolfe and Montcalm, died of their wounds. The park is the best late afternoon in the city, with the sun dropping over the river and the Quebec Bridge in the distance.

About 1h30, park access around 6 Canadian dollars and the cable car around 15 return, 20 minutes by car from central Quebec on Highway 440. Start early, before the coach tours.

The falls drop 83 metres, 30 more than Niagara, straight into the St Lawrence. Ride the cable car up and walk down the 487 step stairway that runs beside the wall of water; the suspension bridge over the crest gives the view from above. In winter the spray freezes into a twenty metre ice cone that locals call the sugarloaf.

Three hours with stops, free, over the bridge just past the falls. The island is 34 km long and has a single road, the Chemin Royal, which circles it in 67 km and about an hour without stopping.

There are six villages, each with a French regime stone church, and much of Quebec food comes from here: strawberries, potatoes, apples and blackcurrant. Stop at Sainte-Petronille, the first village, for the view of the Frontenac across the water, and at one cider house at least to try ice cider, made from apples picked frozen and concentrated by the cold itself, a Quebec invention of the 1990s.

In September and October the farms open for apple picking and the maples turn red, which is the best moment of the year to do this loop.

About an hour, free entry, 30 minutes east of the island bridge on Route 138. It has been a pilgrimage shrine since 1658, when shipwrecked Breton sailors credited their survival to Saint Anne.

The present basilica dates from 1926 and the ceiling is what stays with you: whole vaults covered in gold mosaic, made by French artists over decades. Just inside the door, two columns are lined with crutches and canes left by pilgrims who say they were healed, an image that explains the place better than any plaque.

About 1h30, paid admission at the gate, 15 minutes further along the same Route 138. The Sainte-Anne-du-Nord river has cut a granite gorge 74 metres deep and drops into it.

The circuit crosses the cleft on three suspension bridges at different heights, and the top one genuinely sways. In September and October the maples on both walls turn orange and it is the best time to come. If you want more, the Air Canyon zipline crosses the gorge and is sold separately, with booking recommended because departures are limited.

About two hours, free, 1h20 northeast of Quebec City on Route 138. The descent into the bay, when the road leaves the plateau and the town appears below between the mountains, is the finest moment of the drive.

The village sits at the bottom of a 56 km meteorite crater that landed 400 million years ago and left the valley soil fertile. It was here that a group of street performers founded Cirque du Soleil in 1984, and Rue Saint-Jean-Baptiste still holds more than twenty art galleries in colourful wooden houses, one next to the other.

Quick stop, 1h15, paid admission, 20 minutes east of Baie-Saint-Paul on the Route du Fleuve, which drops to the waterline and is one of the finest roads in the region.

The museum occupies the shipyard at Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive, where the last wooden schooners that carried cargo on the St Lawrence were built, up to the 1960s. Three of them sit in dry dock and can be walked through.

Three hours including the crossing, with a free ferry from Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive every half hour. Jacques Cartier landed here in 1535 and named the island after the hazel trees he found.

The full loop is 26 km, an hour by car or half a day by bike. Stop at the two restored mills, one water and one wind, which still grind wheat in summer, and at the bakeries that bake bread in stone ovens. The rest is country road between barns and the river, which by here is already salt and 15 km wide.

Return to Quebec City the same way, about 1h40 from the ferry.

Quick stop, 45 minutes, free, 2h40 from Quebec City on Highway 20. Leave Quebec early: the drive is direct and dull, and the good part of the day is at the far end.

Atwater dates from 1933, like Jean-Talon, but it is smaller and more concentrated: a central hall with butchers and cheesemongers, the art deco clock tower in the middle and the growers stalls outside, looking over the Lachine Canal. This is where you buy real maple syrup, in a tin, and aged cheese to take home.

About 1h15, free entry with a voluntary contribution, 15 minutes by car from the market, on the west slope of Mount Royal and on the way to the airport.

The dome is 97 metres and the third largest church dome in the world, after St Peter and the Duomo in Milan. The story is more interesting than the size: Brother Andre, an illiterate and sickly college porter, started in 1904 with a wooden chapel five metres square on the hillside, and his reputation as a healer brought in the money that built all of this within thirty years.

Climb the 283 steps of the central stairway if you like, or take the side lift. From the terrace you see the whole west of Montreal. It is 20 minutes from the Oratory to the airport.