Québec City and Château Frontenac

(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.

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.

See that room at the top of the turret? The corner room right under the green roof? That was us.

A Gold Floor hallway. It was lovely and quiet in addition to being pretty.

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.

The bed. Yes, there are bedside lights and canopy lights. 

The sitting area as viewed from the foot of the bed.

Through the sitting area, to the left of the fireplace, was the turret.

Turret room at night. I want to write my thesis here.

One of the turret views by day.

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.

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:

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

Losing Confidence in the Signs of Spring

After a weekend of sangria,

sunshine,

and patios,

the weather has decided that it is a tease. It is cold, windy, snowing, slushy, and miserable. Our plans for a Thursday soccer game have been put on hold because the pitch is currently under 5-10cm of snow. Montreal, you win this round.

I'm moving to California.

Maybe Africa.

Signs of Spring

Minus ten degrees Celsius. That's the average winter temperature in Montreal. If you've ever lived in the northern reaches of the world, you know that statistic is nonsense. Temperature means nothing without a windchill factored in. If you hate the cold as much as I do, it usually feels like minus a million.

Winter in Montreal sucks. Many of my foreign co-workers moved to Canada hearing little else about it other than "It's cold! Haha! We'll think of you when we're on the beach at Christmas, mate!". That said, this past winter has sucked a little less hard than usual. The snow was gone by mid-March. If that doesn't sound remarkable, here's a picture from March 11th 2008:

Montreal approaching spring. Really! Look at all the melting snow on the sidewalk. 

This winter, there weren't very many days where it dipped below -20, let alone -30. This winter, there was never this much snow on the ground at any one time. This winter, my dad didn't get a chance to use the snowblower that March 2008 prompted him to buy. This year, on March 11th, it was 10 degrees ABOVE zero, and people were walking around in shorts and T-shirts.

SO, because I'm a horrible Canadian for loving how early spring has come this year, and thinking that this global warming stuff isn't so bad, I (maybe) lost it a little when I saw the first daffodils blooming in the hospital garden today. I might have cooed. I might have forced Jesse to stop walking, just a second please please I need to take a picture of the flower.

Daffodil. Date stamp: April 19th. It happened. 

Unknown blue flower. The onset of spring has co-incided with the installation of "Hipstamatic", A riotously fun photo app, on my iPhone.

Green grass, green shrubs, spring spring SPRING!!

Spring is wonderful, the same way Fridays are wonderful. Sure, Friday isn't the WEEKEND, but it's great because you're so close you can taste it and since it hasn't started yet you're not sad about how soon it's going to be over.

Maybe I need to live somewhere where it's summer all year round.