Dufferin Terrace

There’s a particular kind of walking that only happens on Dufferin Terrace — slow, aimless, faintly ceremonial, everyone pausing at the same railing to look at the same river. The boardwalk runs along the top of Cap Diamant, in front of Château Frontenac, and it does the single most important thing a piece of public space in a beautiful city can do: it gets out of the way and lets you look. I’ve been three times now, in three different seasons, and each time I’ve ended up standing at the railing longer than I meant to, watching cargo ships or ice floes or, once, a lone kayaker crossing the St. Lawrence in October, which struck me as either very brave or slightly insane.

In winter, the terrace transforms into something else entirely — a toboggan slide has operated here since the 1880s, a genuinely old-fashioned wooden chute that drops you down the cliff face at a speed that feels much faster than it probably is. Lia refused twice and then did it and screamed the entire way and immediately wanted to go again, which is roughly the reaction everyone has. Underneath the terrace, archaeological digs have exposed the foundations of the old Château Saint-Louis, the residence of French and British governors, visible through glass panels set into the boardwalk itself — you’re standing on four centuries at once without really trying to.

At the southern end, the terrace narrows into the Promenade des Gouverneurs, a steep staircase-and-boardwalk route that climbs up toward the Citadelle and the Plains of Abraham — a genuinely spectacular walk if your knees are willing, with the whole gorge of the river opening up below you as you climb.

When to go: Sunset, year-round, for the light on the water. Winter for the toboggan slide (it typically runs from late December through March, weather permitting). Early morning in summer to have the boardwalk mostly to yourself before the tour groups arrive.