Cost of our nomad living in Quebec City

Quebec City was the second major stop on our trip to Quebec Province after 4 weeks in Montréal! While the city lacks the vibe of Montreal, it has an impressive historic downtown and ended up being a great stop to let us explore the surrounding attraction Quebec City has to offer. Let’s look into what we liked the most, what we recommend, as well as the details about our budget and how the two of us spent just under $2000 per month. Let’s go explore Quebec City!

Where We Traveled Quebec City, Quebec – Canada

Number of Days 7 weeks (from August 14, 2018 to September 29, 2018)

Type of Travel Married Couple, Slow Travel/Nomadic, Price Conscious

Total living cost $3131 USD (for 2 people) or $33 per person and per day or $999 for person per month

Before getting into the nitty gritty details of our budget, we will take a moment to go over what we did during our trip with this budget. If you came here just for the numbers, check out our budget section below.  

What did we do / see and eat?

If you go to Quebec City, you should aim to visit between July and September so you can avoid very cold temperature that will likely affect your experience of the city. Here are our favorites places to eat, shop and get entertained during the summer:

Our Favorite Festivals:

• Festival d’été de Québec (Quebec City Summer Festival) (7/4-7/14) – We missed it but some people we met told us great things about it. Some are even saying that it is even better than the similar festival in Montreal.
• Grand Feux Loto-Québec (8/2-8/23) While the fireworks weren’t as good as the ones in Montreal, these bi-weekly (& free!) 30 minutes long pyromusical shows are worth seeing if you are visiting Quebec City.
• Quebec City Film Festival (9/12-9/21) – We liked both shorts & feature films that this festival provide in both outdoor (our favorite!) and indoor settings. Did we mention that the film features are from all around the world?

Our Favorite Restaurants:

• Le Chic Shack – If you are into burgers and/or sweet potatoes fries, you need to make a stop at this location. Le Chic Shack offers great burgers (including beef, bison), poutines as well as (home-made!) sodas. Pretty much everything on the menu is sourced from local producers.
• Sushi Kumi – Our favorite AYCE (All You Can Eat) Sushi in Quebec City. Very generous portions of sashimi and great selection of food. We highly recommend to get some sashimi (salmon is definitely the best) and some maki (avocado, avocado+salmon & rainbow rolls).
• Sushi Samurai – Another AYCE to call out. It is in downtown so much easier to access than Sushi Kumi and they also have a similar selection of sushi. It is a bit more pricey but this might be related to their location.
• Chocolato – This isn’t a restaurant per say, but this chocolate and ice cream bar is not to missed if you like ice cream. They have the best “dipped ice cream” we were able to find in Quebec City. Their menu features 20 different kinds of chocolate dipping that can go along with about a dozen toppings.

Our Favorite Grocery Stores:

• Quebec City Farmers Markets – Quebec City has a few farmers markets. Our favorite was the one in the Old Port that has a large variety of seasonal produce for sale, whole quality and freshness are second to none! Actually most produce are coming from Île d’Orleans which is just a 15 minutes car ride away.
• La Récolte – We found this gem 15 minutes away from our apartment. They promote zero waste with the goal of changing how people are doing their grocery shopping. They sell everything in bulk & offer storage alternatives for shoppers (glass jars, tissue bags, bottles). Something we are trying to do more of.
• Avril Supermarché Santé – We discovered this health/organic supermarket quite late but came back often. They have great organic produce and have great specials that enable us to score really great deals. Who doesn’t like deals? 🙂
• Maxi – This is a grocery store chain that you will find across Quebec that sells very affordable produce.

Our Favorite Sights/Activities:

• Old Quebec – You can easily spend a full day to fully discover and enjoy the historic neighborhood of Quebec City. A few items you might want to check out as part of your exploration”
  • Touring the Citadelle – This is the largest British-built fortress in North America! 200 years of military history, where the French and the British armies fought on multiple occasions.
  • Seeing Place Royale – This place is where Quebec City was founded in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain after having opened the very first trading post. The gabled roofs and large chimneys are very typical of the New France era and the houses found in and around Place Royale actually reminded me of the city of Lyon in France. Don’t forget to also check out the large “Fresque des Québécois” (at the bottom of “Côte de la Montagne”)
  • Stroll on “Promenade des Gouverneurs” – This is a giant boardwalk with 300 steps to get to the very top that will give you unobstructed panoramic views of Old Quebec and Île d’Orleans.
  • Discover local products at “Marché du Vieux Port” – See “Our Favorite Grocery Stores” for more info.
• Visit Levis City – Just a boat ride away, across the St Lawrence River, Levis is a small town that provide great view of the city from the Dufferin terrace. You can then explore the small town and eventually stop for a coffee/tea. The Ferry ride is short & provide great view of the Old Quebec (one-way fare for an adult is $3.60 CAD – other fares can be found here).
• Montmorency Waterfall – This massive waterfall is about 12 km (7.5 mi) from downtown. It’s actually 30 m (99’) higher than Niagara fall, and just for that you might want to stop. You can walk from bottom to top of the waterfall by foot or by cable car. You can also enjoy some via ferrata as well as a zipline to get really close to the water! Pro-tip: There are two accesses to the fall. One at the bottom and one at the top. If you take the bus, you will get dropped at the top (you can also drive there) and will save to pay the entrance of the parc that you can spend on a drink or two!
• Île d’Orleans – This island was a farmer’s market paradise for us! It is located about 5 km (3.1 mi) from downtown and you should rent a car to visit it at your own pace (there is not public transportation to get you there). We came back pretty much every weekend to do our grocery shopping as it turns out that most of the produce you can find in farmer’s market through Quebec actually come from here. Besides shopping there for your favorite produce here, don’t forget to check out a sugar shack to see how maple syrup is being produced (The Entailleur was recommended to us – but check their schedule first as they are not open all year round). As the sun start to set, stop buy St Pétronille’s vineyard to get a nice glass of wine and/or some of the food from their Panache Mobile pop up restaurant (it’s actually a gourmet food truck).
• Baie St Paul – You should consider stopping by Baie St Paul for a weekend trip. We booked an BnB studio for the weekend (our rental) and spent one day to hike the Park National des Grands-Jardins and on the second day we visited the Coudres Island.
• Mont Tremblant – This town has a cute pedestrian shopping village, an impressive ski resort (which makes the place extremely busy during the winter) and a beautiful National Park that offers forested hiking trails and lakes for canoeing in the summer spend a great weekend at this. Check out our weekend guide to Mont Tremblant for more details.

How much did we spend in Quebec City?

TL;DR; $33 per person and per day as a couple, or $999 per month per person!

Like with our previous trip to Montreal, we still spent less than $2000 per month during the 7 weeks we spent exploring Quebec city and its neighborhood, enjoying some great food and spending most of our weekends driving around the city to discover Quebec! How did we manage to spend about $2000 for the two of us? Well let’s look into each main budget categories in more details.

Note: Unless specified otherwise, prices are in USD and were converted from CAD to USD using a 0.77 USD to CAD ratio. (so 1 CAD = 0.77 USD).

Accommodation: $1367 total

(Or $436 / person / month | OR ~$15 / person / day)

We stayed at an Airbnb apartment rental in the Maizeret District of Quebec City.

👉 You can check out our Airbnb rental listing here.

Our apartment was on the top floor of a triplex on Bardy’s Avenue. It was a very comfortable 2 bedrooms with 1 of them converted as office, which was perfect to have some space when one of us wanted to work outside of the kitchen area. The apartment has a vintage look that we really enjoyed and a good kitchen that we extensively use to cook. We also had a nice balcony outside.
⇒ In total, for the length of our say, the 2 of us spent $1367 (or $15 per person per day).

Transportation: $403 total

(Or $129 / person / month | OR ~$4 / person / day)

Quebec City has a good Public Transportation system (RTC, Réseau de Transport de la Capitale) that provides only buses. As of 2018, adults can buy tickets for one trip (one way: $3.50 CAD, return: $7 CAD), the entire day ($8.60 CAD), the weekend ($15.75 CAD), 5 consecutive days ($29.50 CAD) or the entire calendar month ($88.50 CAD). (You can get the latest rates on the RTC website).  If you are going to stay an entire month and plan to rely on public transports, we would recommend getting the monthly pass for the most value. And because Quebec City also has a lot of places close by, we also booked a car for 4 weekends (for a total of 10 renting days). We do recommend this approach if you plan to stay a long while and would like to explore outside of Quebec City. We booked at both the Hilton (Avis) and (Thrifty) locations in the city and got great customer services for both of them. We also booked one trip using Turo that was pretty seamless and provided us with a great experience. (You can get a $25 USD credit if you decide to sign-up for Turo by using our link)
⇒ By using a mix of public transportation and rental, we spent a total of $403 on transportation for the length of our stay (or $4 per person per day).

Groceries: $639 total

(Or $204 / person / month | or $3 / person / day)

Quebec City offers plenty of groceries stores, ranging from budget friendly (Maxi) to specialty/higher end (Avril Supermarché Santé)  which is selling organic/health conscious food. One of our favorite was La Recolte, a minimalist / zero waste store where you bring your own container and refill them with just what you need. Quebec City also a big farmer’s markets in downtown (Market Old Port of Quebec) which is open daily and has good & fresh produce (most of them come from Île d’Orleans).
⇒ In total, we spent $639 on groceries (or $3 per person per day) during the length of our stay. This covered 122/138 meals (breakfast, lunch & dinner) which is about $2.63 / meal!

Eating Out: $657 total

(Or $210 / person / month | or $11 / person / day)

Quebec city has some good food which are mostly around the old town which attract quite a lot of tourists to our disappointment. The main specialties are the poutine (french – or sweet potatoes – fries with a cheese gravy on top), the smoke meat sandwich and the maple taffy. We also found a few places that can accomodate for people that have dairy/gluten or sugar restriction on their diet. This includes Le Chic Shack and Sushi Kumi.
⇒ In total, we spent $657 on restaurant (or $11 per person per day) during the length of our stay. This covered 16/138 meals (mostly lunch or dinner). The average cost of our meals in Quebec CItywas $16.12 (including tax + tip) which is 5.1 times more expensive than eating at home (by doing the ratio between what a full day of eating out will cost vs a full day of eating at home as per our budget).

Activities: $66 total

(Or $21 / person / month or $1 / person / day)

July has the Quebec City Summer Festival, August has the Quebec Fireworks festival & September has the Quebec City Film Festival. And there is lots of hiking to do in the surrounding towns around the city so make sure that you have some budget to rent a car on the weekends and go explore.
⇒ In total, we spent $66 on activities (or $1 per person per day) which is relatively inexpensive. Most of the cost went into national park entrance fees.

Our Slow Travelers Tips:

Slow travel is part of our philosophy. It gives us the opportunity to really connect with a place by not having to experience FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and getting unnecessarily stressed for being on a schedule. With slow travel, we can see all the iconic sights, and have time to spare to find the more offbeat spots that most tourists miss. Most of the time, those are the absolute gems. And as this blog post explains, we spend much less by leveraging “local” pricing and being able to leverage long stay discounts.

Here are some tips for anyone that plans to stay in Quebec City:

• Use AirBnB! AirBnB is a website that allows homeowners, in destinations all over the world, the ability to rent private spaces (or entire apartments) for a fee. As nomadic long term travelers, we like to call AirBnB our home as it has helped us save a lot of money and provided us with really great places managed by wonderful hosts! Pro tip: If you sign up for AirBnB using our referral link, you will get get a 55 USD credit (or the equivalent in your local currency), which should give you a pretty nice discount on your first night!
  Use Turo! Turo is a website that allows car owners, in destinations all over the world, the ability to rent their car for a fee. Pro tip: If you sign up for Turo using our referral link, you will get a 25 USD credit that you can use towards your first reservation.

How did we save money for this trip?

• We used travel credit cards with sign-on bonuses to maximize free miles that we then apply towards our trip to travel for (almost) free.
• We walked when we felt like it 🙂 This helped us reduce our public transportation footprint while increasing our exercise activity. Double win!

So that’s it folks! Would you be interested in going to Quebec City for a few weeks? Is it as affordable as you thought it was? Feel free to share your experience and ask questions by leaving a comment below.