Tidbits

Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…

Ice Hotel Quebec-Canada 2006

March 09, 2006, 3:01 am

So came back from another self-made long weekend of snow and ice, only this time we were sleeping in it and not just skiing on it. Jerry (the non-skier) was itching to go on a trip, and decided to go to the Ice Hotel Quebec-Canada, near Quebec City. They had winter promotions all season long, especially for this year I think because of the crappy weather. After weeks of nagging and harassing people, we finally gathered a group of six for the trip: me, Mike, Jerry, KD, Vivian (Jerry’s UW friend from Unisen coop days), and Kitty (Vivian’s 18-year old Montreal friend).

Back when we made the reservation, we were worried that by the time March rolled around, the hotel would have melted. Our fears were in vain, however, as I can only assure you that there were plenty of snow left in Quebec, so much that I regret not going to Mont Sainte Anne at the same time. So to make the most of the weekend, we decided to do some sightseeing in Montreal. What is there to do in Montreal in the middle of winter? Food, food, and more food…

(This turned out to be way longer than I intended, so for the condensed version, check out Jerry’s blog for March 7)

Friday (Mar 3rd)

We wanted to take the overnight Greyhound bus to Montreal, to save Friday night hotel and “time”, with the assumption that we can just sleep for most of the journey. I’m not sure if I want to do that again… We got to the Greyhound station in downtown an hour early for our 12:01 am bus, lined up early, and started boarding. Got to the ticket guy, who told us that the ticket we got at the Greyhound Station in Kitchener is actually for Coach Canada, the 12:30 am bus in the line beside us, the line that was already stretching to the very back by that time. Oh, and that Vivian’s ticket was for the Greyhound though and she would have to go to customer service to switch it. Then the Greyhound bus pulled away.. After another 15 min in line at the ticket booth (customer service was closed), Vivian came back saying that her ticket was not refundable or exchangeable. We managed to hunt down the guy who told us to change the ticket, who told us he was just a lowly baggage handler who didn’t see the “NO REFUND” printed across the top of the ticket, but still managed to get her one for the Canada Coach bus. So by this time, the Coach Canada bus was boarding, and it didn’t seem like there would be room for us. We got to the door, and the lady said they had five seats left. So we got on, somehow squeezing into “free” seats beside scary-looking people taking up 1.5 seats, only to find that I had no seat. The lady told us she miscounted, there was only three seats left for the four of us.

Now this particular Canada Coach route goes from Toronto to Kingston to Cornwall to Montreal, thus much faster than the original Greyhound bus we wanted, which detour to Ottawa. Because it was so full, they split people who were going to Kingston on a separate bus, and it was our good fortune that there was just enough people going to Montreal that we forced the Kingston bus to go to Montreal as well. At first the lady said only ONE of us could go on the second bus, but we convinced her to let us all on the second bus. So we have a nearly full bus crammed full of people going to Montreal in the first bus, and like eight of us in the second bus, each taking up like an entire row of four seats. If we weren’t lucky enough to be off by one like that, it would have been a very very uncomfortable journey to Montreal. As it is, sleep still wasn’t the greatest, and we got to Montreal before 7, more than an hour earlier than when KD was to arrive from Ottawa to pick us up. No matter, we found seats and fell asleep until she had to come into the station to find us. We were sitting right by the door where we told her to pick us up, she could see us from the road, but none of us was awake to see her…

Saturday (Mar 4th)

So after KD arrived, we went to the Avis to pick up our van rental, a Chevy Uplander. I’m still surprised by how they managed to fit so little storage room in so big a van. It came with a DVD player, but no remote, which was next to useless since Kitty only had Cantonese VCDs, or DVDs that required language track changes or subtitles, which we were unable to turn on (bah, how hard is it to put some basic navigation buttons on the box itself??) Kitty lived in what could be considered the Richmond Hill area of Montreal, which isn’t saying much. There’s a sizable population of Chinese in the area, but it’s not Pacific Mall.. Her basement was very nicely furnished, and almost all of us got to sleep in a bed (Jerry got the sofa).

So Montreal drivers have a reputation of being pretty violent drivers. Jerry (our 25+ year old driver) went from tentative and shy to lane swerving and green-light head starts with the best of them. It was a scary sight to behold, almost as scary as the time he nearly ran TWO red lights in a row (just ran one and abrupt stop at the second). When we were planning the trip a few days before, all we managed to decide on are food places we wanted to visit, and attractions we didn’t want to visit (Olympic Stadium, the BioDome thing)…

So first stop was breakfast at the St. Viateur Bagel Shop,reputed to have the best bagels in North America. Only we stumbled on the original store, and not a cafe location. So with no tables or anything, we got our one of everything bagels (8 in all I think), a container of cream cheese and salmon.. mush, and camped out in the van to devour our meal. The bagels indeed were very very good, but could have been a lot better toasted, at a table, indoors, with a nice latte to wash it down…

Then we went to the Notre-Dame Basilica next, pretty nice looking church. Big, with no relation to the one in Paris except for the name, which means “Our Lady”, ie, church dedicated to Mary. Then more food: lunch at Schwartz’s, the world famous smoked meat place. We had to wait nearly half an hour to get seated, but at least the service was very fast and efficient. The smoked meat was pretty good, for smoked meat, which I’m not *that* fond of. And the smell of meat in the place was slightly nauseating. It was there that Jerry had his downfall. Ate too much meat and lost his appetite for the rest of the weekend. Tip: don’t get their steak and meat deal, the steak sucks. Order the meat plate (all smoked meat, nothing else), they give you bread on the side, so you can make yourself as many sandwiches as you want, and still have leftover meat to bring home. Pickles and all that jazz costs extra, don’t let them fool you into getting it cause it sounds complementary, unless you like pickles of course…

After lunch, we walked around the old port area, but the time we spend at each place is restricted by our parking metre. They have a pretty big outdoor skating rink there.

Then Mont-Royal Park, with it’s panoramic view of Montreal (it’s very flat). Hiked up to the cross in really deep snow (the cross we learned the history and significance of from the tour at Notre Dame). There was also a giant skating rink at the top there, and fun-looking toboggan hills. How come Toronto don’t have any giant outdoor skating rinks??

And then to buy more time before our dinner reservation at 8:30, we went to the Montreal Casino. Nothing special, multi-stories, but not that big but very crowded, though surprisingly smoke-free. And the security wasn’t very good, as they checked the first two IDs and let the rest of us in, with our borderline 18-year-old trailing the back. Then we got kicked out cause I was wearing a small backpack which was not allowed… On the way out, we saw a line forming across the bridge to get in, so we got there at just the right time.

Dinner was fondue at fondueMentale, a place that poor Jerry took more than half an hour to find parking. Which was fine since it took them over half an hour to meet our reservation, as the table before us was taking their time with their meals. It was a 3 course meal, with cheese/bread appetizer, meat/broth/hot oil main course, and fruits/chocolate dessert. The atmosphere was cozy but a bit too dark (can barely see the colour of the meat I’m cooking), and reminded us of a converted two-story house. The food was pretty good, but expensive. The main course was like hotpot. We did get to try a lot of strange meat like caribou, deer, and wild boar. By then, I was so very tired, and took naps in between courses. It was especially bad the time dessert rolled around, as the waitress came and cleared the table without me noticing… So I’ve had my fondue meal, and I don’t think I’ll be going again unless it’s a special occasion..

Sunday (Mar 5th)

We wanted to wake up for 9:30 to start the drive to Quebec City, only Vivian’s alarm kept going off at the wrong times, so we didn’t get out the door until after 10. Then we had dim sum. Surprisingly good for non-Toronto standards, and we thought the entire Chinese population in Montreal was in the same restaurant with us, there were that many people there.. I mean, there must not be that many Chinese people there, as whenever we approach people, they automatically speak to us in English, as if all Chinese people are English tourists. Of course, we also got spoken to in Japanese…

So we got to the Ice Hotel after 3, to learn that the activity centre closed at 4:30, not enough time for us to do anything. So we just toured the hotel with all the other tourists milling around (including a Chinese Safeway tour!!), and took a lot of photos (a lot). They had a couple of “themed” rooms which prolly cost double what we paid, and a bunch of standard rooms, which we got. The themed rooms has a theme applied to the decor of the room, so there was a China room, with the bed carved into a dragon, and the great wall depicted on the walls. One room had the bed decorated as a sled, but I was wondering why there was a horse’s butt sticking out of the wall. I think my personal favourite was this room with a circular bed with long red curtains hanging down and funky lights at the top, ala love shack.

Dinner rolled around and we went to this Irish-French fusion place named for a Chinese word (Dazibo). We had something called “Briks” which they claimed they’ve adapted from some North African dish, but Mike called them glorified spring rolls. At least the desserts were good.

Back at the Ice Hotel, we did some snow tubing, trying to find different ways to form multi-person formations to go down the slope together. Then to the N’Ice bar to get our free vodka shots in ice cups. Six flavoured vodka shots in total and we couldn’t even finish them straight, so we mixed everything with a $3 bottle of orange juice to make the “experience” last longer. Tip: the raspberry flavoured one mixes very nicely with orange juice. The peach one makes it taste like fuzzy naval, and the mandarin mix just made it taste bitter. Either it was a Sunday night, or it just wasn’t a happening crowd, but the club/lounge was so dead.

We left after our drinks to shower and to go to the hot tub. The hot tub and sauna was opened overnight for once, but by 1 am, the place was deserted. Walking barefoot in snow was not fun, but the hot tub was nice and warm. With your body all warm, your face don’t feel cold at all, even with a slight breeze. The dry sauna could be hotter though.

And then the moment of truth, when we had to climb into our winter sleeping bags and hope we don’t freeze overnight. The sleeping bag was warm enough, but I didn’t like having to expose my nose to the cold air. Even when I’m sleeping in a normal bed, I prefer having my face covered. But they said I shouldn’t breathe into the bag because condensation will make the inside of the sleeping bag wet, which is very dangerous. So other than my nose, everything else was pretty toasty, though being all wrapped up mummy-like, head and all, isn’t that comfortable. Oh, and we technically only have our rooms from 9 pm to 9 am, at 9:30 the tourists are allowed to come in and visit your room. It really is like a sleepover at a tourist attraction.

Monday (Mar 6th)

Woke up at 7:30 so we can enjoy our breakfast buffet and still have enough time to use our activity pass before we had to leave at noon. It was your typical western breakfast: eggs, home fries, bacon, sausages, fruits and bread. But you know it’s at a higher class place when people can custom order “sunny side up eggs” directly from the kitchen.

The Ice Hotel is actually located near the Duchesnay Resort, which was where the breakfast restaurant is located. It also serves a $35 four course dinner. One of the Ice Hotel reservation packages includes one nights accommodation at the Duchesnay on the same night as your ice hotel night, in case you paid that much to sleep in ice but chicken out at the last minute. Being a resort, it also offers various winter activities such as cross country ski rentals, snowshoe rentals, skates, etc, plus the more expensive dog sledding and snowmobile rides. Our package included a multi-activity pass, which basically gave us rentals for the cheaper activities.

So after breakfast, we tried cross-country skiing. I’ve never really done it before, but it’s not that hard to move around since the non-skiers picked it up right. What we lacked is the proper technique, making the whole experience a bit of workout. You also can’t snowplow properly in such thin skis, so I have no idea how you are suppose to stop or slow down. Thankfully, the place was designed with beginners in mind, and so had nice trails with deep trenches in the snow. All we had to do is stand in them, especially for downhill parts. The downhill parts are the best, it’s like being on a roller coaster. The uphill parts sucked.

Since we had less than 3 hrs to spend, half the group went skating after the first 2.5 km cross-country trail, and the alpine skiers (Mike and KD) and I went on a longer 5 km trail. It was pretty tiring, but fun, as we didn’t miss out much on the skimpy little skating pond that you had to pay $5 to use without an activity pass. I lugged my skates all the way there and didn’t even get to use it.

Then it was a mad rush back to Montreal to catch our 5 pm VIA train. On the way back, we stopped at this weird hotel/restaurant with dinosaur sculptures and this monster truck with really really large wheels near Drummondville, Quebec, someplace worthy of Roadside America.

We almost didn’t make it to our train on time, as right on the highway ramp at Kitty’s house it was stop and go traffic because a lane further down was closed. And eek, apparently during rush hour, the fast lane is reserved for buses, and they have buses zooming by heading in the opposite direction, ie, against traffic, depending on the time of day. It was pretty startling to see at first (and Kitty told us that there was a tragic incident involving a very confused elderly couple who wandered into the bus lane at the wrong time of day...) But luckily we did make it to the station on time, and had a pretty uneventful 4 hrs train ride back to Toronto. Train is much faster and more comfortable, if only it wasn’t also that much more expensive!

Phew, all done! The photos are coming soon. I have like 700 mb of my own photos to go through, not to mention four other cameras… So now that this trip is over with, enough winter, bring on spring!!