Under construction

    Today I somehow successfully got out of bed at 5 a.m., and so I caught the 6 a.m. bus to Quebec City.  If you are ever in the area, you MUST go to Quebec City.  It is the only walled city in North America north of Mexico, and truly there were times when I had to remind myself that I was not in Europe, in fact I was only a few hundred miles from my own country.  I decided to take the self-guided walking tour suggested by my travel guide (Lonely Planet--don't leave home without it!).  Despite the fact that everyone you run into is a tourist (which to be honest, usually sends me running for the hills), it actually is a really interesting and fun town.  I will post pictures soon, because words just won't suffice in this instance, but trust me, it was worth getting up early and spending half the day on a bus to get here.  In the end I only spent 7 hours in the town, and in those 7 I believe I walked most the town twice and even three times in some areas.  I also was able to catch a street performer singing Quebecois Chanson, which was an experience without which I was determined not to leave Quebec.  There was even an older gentleman who spontaneously erupted into traditional dance!  Oh yes, I have pictures!  Check back with me Monday, I should have everything posted by then.
 
   Quebec City is also a great place to explore Inuit art.  There are several stores that sell Inuit sculptures and even a culture center centered around this style.  Sadly, I was denied entry to the culture center because with ice cream cone in hand, I apparently resemble a six year old hell bent on running around and wreaking general havoc.  How exactly ice cream will ruin stone sculptures is beyond me, and unfortunately after moving on, I did not have a chance to return to that area of town, but I did spend plenty of time looking through their windows--take that ice cream haters!

More tomorrow!

Ice Hotel

There was only a tiny gap left in the windscreen and I squinted through it desperately trying to see where the road was. Outside, the snow, (“frozen pellets” the radio had said ominously) rocketed towards me smashing into the front of the car. The windscreen wipers were barely moving at quarter speed and looked only seconds away from total collapse. I peered into the mirror. I was the only car on the road. Had I somehow missed the meeting that told everyone in Quebec to stay indoors and lie on thick bear rugs in front of cosy wood fires listening to Leonard Cohen?
Whatever, there were to be no hearthside happy endings for me tonight. Even if I made it through the blizzard my adventure was only just beginning. I was on my way northeast from Montreal towards Quebec City. My destination was “L’Hotel De Glace” an ice hotel just outside the charming cobbled street capital of Quebec.
“You don’t really want to stay the night do you?” Asked the concerned lady at my car rental agency.
“Just go visit it and then stay in Quebec City, much more comfortable and amazing food to boot.” She continued temptingly.
Hindsight is a marvellous thing? Why hadn’t I listened to her? I could have been lolling on a cosy firelit Grizzly right now. No, I’d got on my high horse and taken her cautiousness as a challenge and told myself that I should definitely spend a night there. It was an ice hotel after all. Surely over-nighting was the very point of the place wasn’t it? Besides, it was one of those things on my “hundred things to do before I die “ list. I’d always fancied trying it.
I was always meaning to go to the one in Northern Sweden but had never got round to it. Then I read that they’d opened one outside Quebec City. I’d always fancied going there as, in Canadian terms, it’s relatively ancient, the most European of all cities in North America…and, more importantly, the food was apparently superb.
So here I was in the most extreme snowstorm that I’d ever been in, driving some big anonymous American car up an endless Canadian highway into the middle of nowhere. Maybe they’d find my car in the spring when the snow melted, my hand frozen in one last desperate attempt to wipe the windscreen. I was beginning to panic slightly. What the hell was I doing here? I’ve got a lovely wife and kids back home, why couldn’t I just be an accountant or something? I was getting a state when…suddenly, like the reassuring beam of a lighthouse, there it was, a big blue sign: “Hotel De Glace 5kms,” I’d nearly made it.
I turned left onto the un-gritted exit and my car went into a tailspin. It must have turned through 1080 degrees as I froze and braced for the impact. But there was none. If there had been any other cars around I’d have been a goner. As it was, I ended up somehow facing in the right direction with the engine still running. It was clearly my destiny to freeze my arse off in the ice hotel and not die in the back seat of my car. I drove on cautiously.
I parked my shell-shocked car and clambered up to the imposing entrance lit by two huge tikki torches. A fairly frightening looking doorman asked to see my ID? Didn’t he realise what I’d been through to get here? I needed a drink and fast and I really felt that I was old enough. He explained politely that, to get into the place, you needed a series of coloured ID stickers indicating if you were a visitor, an overnight guest or just a passing polar bear. I retreated defeated to the cosy, warm lodge situated on the hill above.
Once I’d thawed out slightly and got my blue badge I wandered back down to have a look around. It really was quite extraordinary. The ice that is carved into huge blocks and used to build the place is not your normal bog-standard ice. Apparently this has too many impurities and so this stuff is especially purified and becomes far more see-through and allows it to do weird things with light and make you feel like you’re on the Superman set somewhere near the North Pole.
For entertainment there was a night-club and the obligatory “Absolut” bar complete with ice bar and ice glasses to drink from. There was also an ice chapel where a couple from Washington DC who, in that US diaspora type of way, fancied themselves as Scots and were getting married replete with bag-pipers and kilts.
I slipped away to visit the bedrooms as someone started reading some Robert Bruce in a terrible Scottish accent. Each room was a small windowless ice cell off long snow-tube corridors. Most had a particular theme. There were beds of ice made in the shape of Dragons and Sphinxes and Sleighs, it was all very impressive and outstandingly beautiful but I couldn’t get the fact that I was going to be spending the night here out of my head. The only thing in each room not made of ice was a thin mattress that lay on a concealed wooden board on top of each iced bed sculpture. Strewn over the mattresses were several rather scraggy animal hides of indeterminate origin. Nothing gave me any reassuring indication of any sort of warmth ahead.
I padded back up to the lodge to be told that I would have supper there before having a lecture on how to survive overnight in the hotel. I ate well, if not apprehensively, before assembling in front of the lodge’s inviting looking open fire for my lecture. The first thing that was produced was a very impressive looking Arctic sleeping bag. I felt better already. This didn’t last for long. I’m a bilingual French speaker and had felt the urge to show off by opting for the French language lecture. This was partly to avoid any possibility of meeting any English tourists but mostly, to show off. I would pay for my hubris.
A tough looking woman started speaking about the sleeping bag and I nearly jumped up to her aid. The noise coming from her mouth was like nothing I’d ever heard before, except once when our family cat got her tail caught in a door. I sat there looking round the room wondering if anyone else was going to do anything about the obvious pain she was in. French-Quebecois (for this was what she was semi-communicating in) is like no language that I have ever heard. It’s like listening to someone from deepest, darkest Glasgow giving a lecture in authentically guttural Chaucerian English. Worryingly, most people seemed to be understanding what she was saying. Any normal person would have owned up to their ignorance and got themselves transferred to the English lecture. Being English, I did nothing of the sort and nodded through the whole thing. I left none the wiser as to how I was going to survive the night in Guantanamo on ice.
A large group of overnighters were making their way down to the hotel so I fell in with them trying to pick up any tips I could. I quickly realised that I stuck out like a sore thumb. Everyone, bar me, was a couple. I felt a bit like the fully clothed person stumbling round a nudist colony. Most of the couples went off to the bar for their complimentary cocktail and the obligatory photographs. I took this opportunity to slip off towards my bedroom. I didn’t fancy being a wallflower and I was actually rather tired having spent the previous night out on the tiles in Montreal with my young “niece,” a student at McGill University. I had opted for the “sleigh” bedroom, mainly because it was the nearest to the external heated bathrooms that I planned to spend my night in if everything went pear-shaped. As I made my way towards it I came across a little courtyard in the middle of the building that I hadn’t noticed before. In the centre was a hot tub in which you could lie back and look at the stars. Things were looking up. I stripped off as quickly as possible in my room and put on the dressing gown that I’d been given in the lodge. I kept my feet in my warm furry boots and headed off back to the hot tub. I got in and, for a moment everything was fantastic. The starry canopy above me was crystal clear and I could feel my body gently recharging its’ batteries. Then, from another corner of the courtyard, came a canoodling couple in their matching dressing gowns. As they reached the wooden slats that surrounded the hot tub they noticed me and stopped in their tracks. Whatever information had been in their lecture had clearly not included the possibility of a solitary whale beached in the hot tub. I smiled politely but they studiously ignored me. They eventually got in but acted so awkwardly, staring at me and tapping their fingers on the rim that I soon got the hint. I hopped out, the icy air pricking me like a thousand little daggers. I got into my dressing gown and boots and legged it back to my cell. I put one of the animal skins on the floor and piled all my clothes onto it in a vain effort to keep them dry.
I clambered into my sleeping bag and tried to do it up from the inside. Halfway up my body, the zip broke off. I was nervous now. I didn’t know how serious not being completely covered might be but it was too cold to get out and try to get a new one. I was starting to feel a little lethargic. The way Ray Mears always tells you that you’re going to feel, moments before you die of exposure. I stuffed all my clothes into my sleeping bag and tried to wrap them round the opening of my sleeping bag. I was incredibly uncomfortable. Moments before I finally fell asleep, I can remember actually wondering if I was ever going to wake up again which didn’t make for a relaxing experience.
There was a womb-like silence in the room. The walls were over a metre thick and, cocooned in my broken sleeping bag, I felt a kinship with one of the Pharaonic slaves, locked up alive in his master’s tomb, watching the last chink of light being snuffed out by relieved courtiers. I presumed that a lot of my dark thoughts were to do with being alone? An enthusiastic blonde would have definitely made the whole experience a lot easier.
I did wake up, my nose numb with cold, aching slightly and realising that I had to get out of this place immediately. I had absolutely no idea what time it was. I threw off my sleeping bag and struggled into my sweaty damp clothes. I tried to pull on my boots only to find that, because they’d got damp after my hot tub, they’d completely frozen solid inside. I put on my socks and, carrying my boots scurried out of the building towards my car. A dozing security man jumped up out of some ice cubicle and asked me if everything was OK? I behaved in my best English fashion and nodded enthusiastically as I wandered towards the car park at five in the morning in my rapidly freezing socks. I got in the car, gunned the engine, whacked the heating on full and slid away in the direction of Quebec City and the Grizzly Bear rug.
Three days later having indulged myself in an orgiastic marathon of gluttony in one of the best cities I’ve ever visited I had time to reflect on my ice hotel experience. I was very glad to have seen it and very proud of myself for having braved a night. My advice is to definitely pay it a visit but, if you’re planning to spend the night, bring a blonde.

We arrived in Quebec City yesterday, after leaving a rainy Montreal, where we spent our last afternoon staring at Macbooks in the windows of computer shops (and then deciding they cost too much) and visiting the Montreal modern art museum, which was just plain odd, and included a curious exhibition of neon lights.

Last night we had a lovely meal out at a cafe on the main shopping street, which was buzzing until late and very European, despite the skyscrapers in the background and a crocs shop opposite us (which I keep going into... maybe just one more pair...). Today we wandered around the edge of Old Quebec, which is a walled city and visited the spot where the British defeated the French way back when - after this and the war museum, I can see why French-Canadians aren't the biggest fans of the British. The fact that there were people in the streets of Montreal protesting about not wanting to be a part of the British Empire (which I'm quite sure is no longer true...) and the Quebec car number plates all have 'je me souviens' (I remember) on them, with regards to their tumultuous past with the British, I get the impression that the Quebecois may still have a small chip on their shoulder...

Tomorrow we head back to Toronto for the last time, so it's bye-bye travels and hello work - we're rearing to go now and really looking forward to it, so fingers crossed it's as good as we hope.

Thanks Jess for your interesting comments - you truly are a freakish little child - hope you are all well at home and beyond.

Au revoir!

Catherine xxx  

I had intended to spend more time in Quebec City, and probably should have left Montréal a day or so earlier and spent time exploring Quebec, but I didn't.  Instead we only spent a few hours here. 

We headed in for breakfast, since we hadn't yet got completey organised in terms of all our camping food.  Then we just walked all around the top of the wall of the city.  So we saw various parts of the old town, and parts of the newer areas if we looked the other direction.  We saw out across the water, and lots of pretty things along the way.  And I still think it would have been lovely to stay longer, but I was just too excited about getting to Prince Edward Island ASAP! 

So we continued our drive eastwards, and stayed at a really sweet campground at Lac Malcolm, where we literally camped right on the edge of the lake - it was seriously pretty. 

We stayed there just for two nights in may 2007. It's situated outside of Quebec - you can reach the city by car or bus. The room was big and very clean. The beds were fantastic. We used the internet for free in the lobby. Breakfast was available in the restaurant - but we did'nt use it. Parking was for free.