36 Best Sights in Quebec, Canada

Make sure you bring along a designated driver for this Wine Route, which includes 22 wineries. Map out your chosen stops, and then travel from one to the next to learn about their history and local products and, best of all, sample the wine. Most wineries have an area outdoors where you can enjoy a picnic.  Call for hours as they may change seasonally.

Rue du Petit-Champlain, the oldest street in the city, was once the main thoroughfare of a harbor village, with trading posts and the homes of rich merchants. Today it has pleasant boutiques, art galleries, and cafés, and on summer days the street is packed with tourists. Natural-fiber weaving, Inuit carvings, hand-painted silks, local designers, and enameled copper crafts are among local specialties for sale here. If you're coming from Upper Town, take the Escalier Casse-Cou (Breakneck Steps) down, and the funicular back up (or round-trip): both deliver you to the start of this busy, unique street.

Built in 1847, this is one of the purest examples of the Gothic Revival style in Canada, with a high vaulted ceiling glowing with green and gold mosaics. The tall, slender columns are actually pine logs lashed together and decorated to look like marble, so that if you stand in one of the back corners and look toward the altar you really do feel as if you're peering at the sacred through a grove of trees. St. Pat's—as most of its parishioners call it—is to Montréal's anglophone Catholics what the Basilique Notre-Dame-de-Montréal is to their French-speaking brethren—the mother church and a monument to faith and courage. One of the joys of visiting the place is that you'll probably be the only tourist there, so you'll have plenty of time to check out the old pulpit and the huge lamp decorated with six angels two meters (six feet) tall hanging over the main altar. And if you're named after some relatively obscure saint like Scholastica or Aeden of Fleury, you can search for your namesake's portrait among the 170 painted panels on the walls of the nave. For a solemn experience, visit on the third Sunday of the month (September through June), when the mass is sung completely in Latin.

At the very heart of Old Québec City's Upper Town, a wide boardwalk with an intricate wrought-iron guardrail encircles the iconic Château Frontenac. This promenade is lined with cannons brought by the British for defense in the late 18th century, offering breathtaking panoramic views of the St. Lawrence River's narrowest point, Île d'Orléans, and the distant Laurentian and Appalachian mountains. This enchanting spot shines year-round. Summers burst with lively street performers, while winters transform it into a thrilling, 70 km/h (43.5 mph) wooden toboggan run. From its western end, the Promenade des Gouverneurs extends towards Cap Diamant and La Citadelle. You can also board the funicular here, descending to Rue du Petit-Champlain. It truly is the ideal starting or ending point for any Old Québec discovery walk.

Powerful Ouiatchouan Falls, higher than Niagara Falls, overlook and long ago powered this once thriving mill town. Ultramodern in its day, the village had electricity and running water 25 years before the rest of Québec, but administrative and production pitfalls closed the mill and by 1927 all the residents had departed. Today, you can see the beautifully restored mill, post office, general store, and butcher shop, then hike to the top of the falls, where a glass platform puts you directly over the center of the cascade. Modern accommodations are available within the general store and some restored period houses, and campgrounds and rustic cottages to rent are other options.

Cougars, polar bears, grizzly bears, Canadian lynx, American bison, and Japanese macaques are among the 75 species that roam open environments here. Between June and October, guides lead overnight tours in the Land of the Caribou, including hiking, a campfire meal, and canoeing on Lac Montagnais, where caribou may swim right by your boat.