(alternate title: Holy monster post, Batman!; alternate alternate title: The scary big post that has made me procrastinate on my procrastination device)
On April 24th (thank goodness digital photos are automatically time-stamped), Dave took me on a mystery road trip. We (read: Dave) had been doing a lot of research on the Fairmont hotel properties (because of our upcoming Rockies trip and stays planned at
Lake Louise and
Jasper Park Lodge) so I guessed that we were probably staying at a Fairmont (poor me), but wasn't sure which one. My first guess -
Le Château Frontenac, in Québec City - was correct.
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| One of the many lovely views of Québec City on the drive in. |
When we got to the hotel, Dave learned that we had been upgraded from a regular room to a corner Gold Floor room. With a turret.
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| See that room at the top of the turret? The corner room right under the green roof? That was us. |
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| A Gold Floor hallway. It was lovely and quiet in addition to being pretty. |
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| Except it's an "Or" room, because we're in Québec and things are French here. |
I have been impressed by hotel rooms before, but when we walked into our room I think I actually exclaimed something in surprise. It was like the fancy hotel room where the wealthy people in movies stay.
From the door, we had a closet on the left and a bathroom on the right. Ahead was a side view of the most luxuriously appointed bed I'd ever seen outside of decorating magazines. Classical music was playing on a small clock radio with better sound quality than my speakers.
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| The bed. Yes, there are bedside lights and canopy lights. |
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| The sitting area as viewed from the foot of the bed. |
Through the sitting area, to the left of the fireplace, was the turret.
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| Turret room at night. I want to write my thesis here. |
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One of the turret views by day.
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| One of the turret views by night. |
We had a package that included a table d'hôte dinner at
Restaurant le Champlain downstairs, which was amazing.
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| Still life of the bottle of wine that was included with our dinner package. |
The service was incredible, and the food was so so very good. My favourite course was the tuna tartar appetizer, with avocado and curry oil, wasabi mustard, and fresh coriander:
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| I wish I could eat this again. It has been maimed because I tucked in before remembering to take a photo. It's also the only time I've ever enjoyed avocado in anything. |
The next night, we still needed to eat so we asked the concierge for a recommendation. Between her very helpful advice and some
TripAdvisor reviews, we ended up at
Conti Caffe, just down the street.
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| Another wine still life. Loved the custom wine glasses. |
We both ordered from the table d'hôte, and the best dish of the night was Dave's starter: the veal cannelloni.
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| Mmmmmmmmmm..... I had two bites, but I wanted the whole thing. |
Dave's note: I
did offer to swap appetizers...
The next morning, before heading back to Montreal, we had the breakfast buffet in
Le Café de la Terasse. It was included in our package, and I'm glad because we wouldn't have checked it out otherwise. I'm not a huge fan of breakfast buffets, because I don't ever eat enough to make them worth it, and I really like my eggs fresh. This breakfast buffet was amazing though. A few things that caught my attention were: the cheese platter, lots of fresh bread for toast, the generous selection of good fruit (kiwi! strawberries!), and really delicious coffee.
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| We were sad to leave. |
Staying at the Château Frontenac was so much fun. I'm excited to see the other Fairmont hotels we have booked in Alberta at the end of June!
PS - President's Club. It's free to sign up online, and you get free internet during your stay among other perks. Being able to check TripAdvisor and email from the room was really nice.
