Cool Vacay

NOTICE:   WE LOST ONE OF OUR CAMERAS SO PICS ARE LIMITED-SAD I KNOW

We just got back from a trip to Montreal and Quebec.  Let me clarify something for you right now.  Unless you've been to Canada in January, you've never known what it is to be cold.  With that said, it was one of the best trips I've ever taken.

Montreal is a fairly cool place.  An architectural mix of neoclassical, 70's and modern.  The majority of the city isn't gorgeous but the warmth of it's residents and the quality of food more than compensates.  The food in French speaking Canada is the best value I've had anywhere in the world.  Could you get the same innovation and quality of ingredients in say, Paris?  Of course you could but dinner at one of the upper echelon of restaurants in Paris will cost you literally 5-6 times what you'd pay in land of the cold Frenchman.  

We stayed at the W Montreal.  It's the best W we've ever stayed at although we did get in trouble for crashing some business party  and drinking all their herbal tea.  Oh, there's nothing like getting in trouble to make you feel young again.  

After Montreal, we drove to a small rural town where the Hotel De Glace is located.  If you haven't stayed at an Ice Hotel than by all means please add it to your bucket list.  Yeah, it's a little cold but you dress for it.  The hotel is absolutely stunning and the pictures are a sad representation of it's true grandeur.  

Full Disclosure:  We got a warm hotel room (located on the premises) just in case we were miserable.  I'm proud to report that this room remained vacant and was only used to hold items that don't freeze well.

Ice glasses that we carved

Our Room

We chose the only room that had it's own hot tub.  It was just as luxurious as it sounds.  The fireplace also came in handy.

Different rooms

We totally rocked the ice slide.  Mostly kids used it and occasionally an adult would give it a try.  Candice and I abused ourselves on the slide over and over again and we have the bruises to prove it.  I know people always say they're just kids in grown up bodies but I really feel that way.

Hotel De Glace is the only ice hotel in North America and only a few hour plane ride from most US locations.  Do yourself a favor, go and enjoy this work of frozen masterpiece, you'll be glad you did.

The next day we rented snowmobiles.  We thought it was interesting that snowmobiles are a legitimate form of transportation in this frigid part of the world.  They have backwoods roads that are regulated like paved highways would be.  You can snowmobile from Montreal to Quebec City via snowmobile roads.  We had better pics of us in rad jumpsuits but these photos are gone for good.  The snowmobiles got up to 65 mph, which was sweet.

We then went dog sledding.  We thought we would probably just be sitting in a sled having a group of dogs haul us around, fun, gimmicky but whatever.  Little did we know that we would be mushing our own team of dogs.

The thing is, I know I look like a complete tool in this hat but honestly I just trying not keel over and die from the cold.  Driving the dogs (mix of malamutes and huskies) was so much fun and also a little tricky.  In fact, it was so tricky Candice crashed our sled into a snowbank.  We both tumbled off the sled and our faithful team of canine companions just kept on going, leaving us alone in the freakin' wilderness.  Thankfully, our guide spotted us and came back to the rescue.

Finally we ended up in Quebec City.  Quebec city is like a mini-Paris without the jetlag.  The town is adorable with intimate cobblestone streets and traditional french architechture abounding.  We lucked out that we came just in time for the winter carnivale.

The people of Quebec embrace winter like no other people on earth.  It has to be the snow/ice sculpture carving capitol of the world.  You see sculptures in every nook and cranny. 

The carnivale itself had snowrafting (shown above), ziplining, human foosball and tons of games and distractions.  It was sweet.

We pretty much stayed at Hogwarts school for witchcraft and wizardry also known as Cheteau Frontenac

Some other shots of the city.

This post is too long and I know because I'm bored writing it.  

In short Quebec is cool in more ways than one.