Auberge Saint-Antoine is lovely. It’s a member of Relais & Chateaux so you know it will be wonderful. The suites are beautiful, some with terrific terraces overlooking the river.
Given the choice, I would choose it in a flash over Chateau Frontenac.
I’ve never stayed in the Frontenac but I have visited the bar and had a drink there on several occasions
I already posted in the thread posted by Nrdsb4. Love Quebec City! Now if you read, you will have to do like the rest of the CC’ers and read the Inspector Gamache books by Louise Penny to put you in the mood.
This just came through my inbox: Where to eat and drink in Montreal
http://www.foodandwine.com/blogs/where-eat-and-drink-montreal?xid=NL_TTIPS041916EatDrinkInMontreal
I visited Quebec city last September and it’s one of the loveliest places I’ve ever been. In addition to all the wonderful places mentioned by earlier posters, I highly recommend taking a walking tour with a certified guide; it made the whole experience so much richer to have someone who obviously loves the city deeply show you all the fascinating historic sights and describe the history.
Edited to remove the link to the website for the guide we used because it may violate TOS.
If you’d like the link to the fabulous guide’s website, please pm me and I’d be glad to send it to anyone who is interested.
Many decades ago. Drove from Wisconsin through Ontario and included both Montreal and Quebec City. Interesting for us to see the St Lawrence River after living near the lakes at the other end of the seaway. Interesting to find Quebec French speakers seemed to only use French while the English speakers were bilingual. At the time there was yet another push for separation from the rest of Canada- had an interesting conversation with an English speaker in our hotel lobby. Their French is not what you learn in the classroom (just as Spanish has many flavors). The landscape and climate were what we were used to, but very different from Texas. Used to French place names in WI as well.
T&C article calling Montreal the new food capital of North America
I know you plan to go in summer, but if anyone here goes in winter, be sure to go on the crazy toboggan ride! http://www.quebecregion.com/en/sliding/toboggan-slide-au-1884/
Montréal may be the new food capital of North America, but unless things have changed radically in the past couple years, I remain disappointed in the cheeses you can buy in grocery stores there. I mean, how can you export French culture all the way over to North America and not send out at least a little bit of an appreciation of really, really good cheese? 
@dfbdfb The grocery stores in Quebec are notoriously bad. The best chain in Canada is Longos and they are only in Ontario. There is also no Whole Foods in Quebec. If you want good cheese in Montreal, you should be going to one of the many excellent cheese shops.
@alwaysamom Whole Foods? You mean Whole Paycheck? Whole Foods is sort of passé now. But Quebec City is gorgeous. Just don’t go during winter. You’ll freeze.
Because of this discussion I now have Quebec at the top of my list to visit. Sounds perfect for what I want. Most likely September or early October. If there is an opinion on a better time of year let me know!
We love Quebec City! It’s about a 6-hour drive for us. Well worth the trip. I could go there every year.
Whole Foods isn’t passe from what I see both in Toronto and at our place in SC. It is always packed!
The busiest weeks of the year in Quebec City are during the winter! Quebec Winter Carnival is lots and lots of fun! Runs for about three weeks in late January/early February.
September through early October would be ldeal for visiting Quebec City. It would be cool at night and in the morning but nice during the day.
Thank you. I think I needed this thread. H and I have not planned a summer vacation ( other than visiting his mom( ugh) and my sis (yeah) in PA and spending a week or 10 days in NYC babysitting grandcat). H has suggested Quebec City for awhile. This thread makes me want to go and there are some great ideas of where to visit and where to stay.
@rom828, if you are flexible, try to hit it when the leaves are changing. We went last year in September, but we’re a little too early for the best fall foliage.
I love both Montreal and Quebec City, some of my favorite places in North America, but I agree they’re very different. Montreal is a big, modern city, sophisticated and cosmopolitan, an important commercial, financial, industrial, intellectual, and cultural center, definitely a North American city but with a francophone flair that makes it feel vaguely European. Quebec City is a much smaller city with an impeccably preserved/restored historic center that makes it more of a tourist attraction and timepiece. It’s a walled city with cobblestone streets and charming stone architecture that can feel almost medieval, though it dates only to the early 1600s (OK, so that’s very early for North America) and some of the fortifications weren’t built until the 1800s to defend against potential attacks from the U.S., You get a bit of that historic preservation flavor in Montreal’s old quarter (Vieux Montreal), but you need to search it out; in Quebec City it’s the main event.
Another difference: Quebec City is overwhelmingly francophone (about 95%) and has a relatively small immigrant population. Montreal has much larger anglophone (about 20%) and immigrant (about 20%) populations, making it one of the most bilingual cities in the world. But employees in the shops, restaurants, and hotels in the historic center of Quebec City will all be bilingual because tourism is their stock in trade. Non-French speakers may have more difficulty in the outlying districts of Quebec City, and even French speakers may face some challenges because Quebecois French has different pronunciations, idiomatic expressions, and even to some extent grammar and vocabulary than the Parisian French you were probably taught. This is also true to some extent in some outlying overwhelmingly francophone districts of Montreal, but bilingualism is much more common in most parts of Montreal.
Easy to do both in one trip. It’s about a 3 hour drive on excellent roads, though the centers of both cities are quite congested so car travel may not be ideal within either city. On the other hand, short automobile excursions from Montreal will get you into the Laurentians, and from Quebec City into Ile d"Orleans and some other delightful St. Lawrence River spots.
@alwaysamom Sorry, i was referring to California and New England. People in California are positively rude when you mention Whole Foods. Care for some water with your celery stalk? That will be $7.
So ideally, if one were to do a combined Montreal/Quebec City vacation, how much total time would be spent? Is 10 days (3 in Montreal, 7 in Quebec City) too long? Or would 7 days (3/4) be plenty? We have the flexibility to do either. I don’t want to come home feeling like I left too much undone, but I’ve taken a few trips before where we looked at each other and wondered why we planned so many days in a given location.