Waiting to Board a Tiny Plane to Quebec City

I'm in the terminal at Bradley, waiting to board a tiny Beechcraft for a 40-minute flight to Montreal. It's my first trip of the year, and the destination is Quebec City, where they are celebrating the Winter Carnival. Fellow blogger and friend Ginger Warder just returned and she warned me--it's cold up there!

Getting to the airport and through the screening, the TSA folks were in a good mood. When I left two quarters in the bin one cried out, 'hey, a tip!' and another sported a marvelous Hollywood tan. 'Nice tan,' I complimented, and he replied "we work on it." I ran into Guy Piccolo at his parking lot and he too was in fine spirits. "We just got back from the Superbowl" he told me. "Great except the wrong guys won."

Over the next few days I'll paint a picture and put in the words of the people I meet on the trip. I haven't traveled since we returned from Sweden in late December, it feels like a perfect time to board a little plane and exit into a place that will feel foreign and new. Even though it's so close, from all I've heard Quebec's charm lies in how much it feels like France.