My Birthday Weekend,
What a weekend that was! Orit planed a perfect surprise for my birthday. We started it on Thursday at Montreal and from there .... just keep on reading.
At Montreal we stayed at a very nice hotel. It is a residential building with huge apartments that was modified into a hotel named VIP St-Jacques.
The place is very beautiful, centrally located in down town, not expensive and the owner is very nice. The funny thing was the parking. Since it was very cold (about -20 deg Celsius) we decided not to leave the car outside. The owner directed us (inside the car) into a very small room that was actually a car elevator. How surprised we were when 
the door closed and the floor began to move!
After settling down, admiring the room and taking the required pictures (you know I have a blog to run and that was a very nice hotel) we went for dinner. We followed the hotel owner recommendation and walked to Modavie restaurant. That was a very good selection though a bit expensive. We had a wonderful first course (Feuilleté de brie - Brie puff pastry with a pear and nut sauce) and good main courses. The restaurant has 2 floors. The upper one is a pub that had a live Jazz show that evening and the lower is a restaurant. We sat in the lower floor enjoyed the music, drank an Australian Shiraz and dinned. There is nothing like that combination to lift your Birthday spirit!
The following day, after having a decent+ breakfast and a short (and freezing) tour at down town Montreal, we started on our journey to Quebec. I did not know what to expect till we got to the location.
It was amazing to see a hotel completely made of ice! It looks like a great deal for 
the Canadian. They sell what they have plenty of - ICE for what they think we have plenty of (Money). The result in unbelievable. Everything is made of ice - the floors, walls, ceiling, chairs, tables, bar, glasses and even the beds. 
To make it more amazing the hotel is filled with icy decorations like pictures, statues and even a small slide. 
The only reason for us to stop making photos was that it was freezing having the hand outside the glove for more then a minute. Speaking of freezing, it was freezing. That night
the temperatures went down to -31 deg Celsius. With the wind factor it went to -40. This kind of weather makes you want to go to your warm icy bad (it was only -3 deg Celsius in our room. By the way, the room was also very nice. Apparently Orit reserved the suites (she had to do it 4 months in advance and she got the last one). Each suite is decorated differently according to a specific theme. 
One was about Chess with status of the different players. Another was about Eskimos, so the bad was inside an igloo. Ours was around Aztec. So we had Atzteci status made of ice. Even our bad was decorated accordingly and we had a sitting place shaped like a tent.
Since it is a respectful place, it had to have a bar and a discotheque. They even had a unique interpretation to the term on the rocks. 
They made their glasses of ice which causes every drink to be really cold!
Another cool thing was a spa. A Jacuzzi and a sauna. That was a funny experience. Running fast to enter the Jacuzzi, in -31 deg Celsius. Once we were in, the body was warm but the head that remained outside was cold. The result was hilarious.
Our hair was frozen, so you could break it with your hands. Orit's eyelashes also froze and became white! After having the warming Jacuzzi, we went to sleep. Also a difficult task at -3 deg on a icy bad! We got a special sleeping bag and very fast took off some of our 4 layers of clothing and dived into it. Very good advise that we got was - go to the bathroom before going to bad! Having to go in the middle of the night is a long and painful experience.
For a presentation about the hotel press the link.
What a weekend that was! Orit planed a perfect surprise for my birthday. We started it on Thursday at Montreal and from there .... just keep on reading.
At Montreal we stayed at a very nice hotel. It is a residential building with huge apartments that was modified into a hotel named VIP St-Jacques.
The place is very beautiful, centrally located in down town, not expensive and the owner is very nice. The funny thing was the parking. Since it was very cold (about -20 deg Celsius) we decided not to leave the car outside. The owner directed us (inside the car) into a very small room that was actually a car elevator. How surprised we were when 
the door closed and the floor began to move!After settling down, admiring the room and taking the required pictures (you know I have a blog to run and that was a very nice hotel) we went for dinner. We followed the hotel owner recommendation and walked to Modavie restaurant. That was a very good selection though a bit expensive. We had a wonderful first course (Feuilleté de brie - Brie puff pastry with a pear and nut sauce) and good main courses. The restaurant has 2 floors. The upper one is a pub that had a live Jazz show that evening and the lower is a restaurant. We sat in the lower floor enjoyed the music, drank an Australian Shiraz and dinned. There is nothing like that combination to lift your Birthday spirit!
The following day, after having a decent+ breakfast and a short (and freezing) tour at down town Montreal, we started on our journey to Quebec. I did not know what to expect till we got to the location.
It was amazing to see a hotel completely made of ice! It looks like a great deal for 
the Canadian. They sell what they have plenty of - ICE for what they think we have plenty of (Money). The result in unbelievable. Everything is made of ice - the floors, walls, ceiling, chairs, tables, bar, glasses and even the beds. 
To make it more amazing the hotel is filled with icy decorations like pictures, statues and even a small slide. 
The only reason for us to stop making photos was that it was freezing having the hand outside the glove for more then a minute. Speaking of freezing, it was freezing. That night
the temperatures went down to -31 deg Celsius. With the wind factor it went to -40. This kind of weather makes you want to go to your warm icy bad (it was only -3 deg Celsius in our room. By the way, the room was also very nice. Apparently Orit reserved the suites (she had to do it 4 months in advance and she got the last one). Each suite is decorated differently according to a specific theme. 
One was about Chess with status of the different players. Another was about Eskimos, so the bad was inside an igloo. Ours was around Aztec. So we had Atzteci status made of ice. Even our bad was decorated accordingly and we had a sitting place shaped like a tent.
Since it is a respectful place, it had to have a bar and a discotheque. They even had a unique interpretation to the term on the rocks. 
They made their glasses of ice which causes every drink to be really cold!Another cool thing was a spa. A Jacuzzi and a sauna. That was a funny experience. Running fast to enter the Jacuzzi, in -31 deg Celsius. Once we were in, the body was warm but the head that remained outside was cold. The result was hilarious.
Our hair was frozen, so you could break it with your hands. Orit's eyelashes also froze and became white! After having the warming Jacuzzi, we went to sleep. Also a difficult task at -3 deg on a icy bad! We got a special sleeping bag and very fast took off some of our 4 layers of clothing and dived into it. Very good advise that we got was - go to the bathroom before going to bad! Having to go in the middle of the night is a long and painful experience.
For a presentation about the hotel press the link.
The following day we got up happy and excited about the adventures ahead. I was a bit tired since all night I dreamt of running away from penguins wearing snickers made of ice. The problem was that the shoe laces keep on breaking (remember that they were made of ice).
After good (and worm) breakfast we embarked on the first advantage for that day: a dog sledge.
I was riding a sledge connected to 9 Husky Dogs that ran through the isolated snow fields of that area. It was amazing! I felt like in a movie. It also gave us some ideas how to use our dog Shuki to generate income...The next thing on our list was the ice festival at Quebec. We drove for a bout 20 miles (the thermometer showed outside temperature of -20 deg Fahrenheit when we entered the car!) and got to the old city of Quebec which looks like old European city. As a matter of fact its the only North America old city that has a wall surrounding it. In the festival there were some attractions. For example they build a (small) palace made of ice, conducted a ice statue competition
and dog sledge race. One of the main attractions was a rafting that was done down a snowy hill! One of the strange thing was an event where brave people wearing 
nothing but swimming suits literally jumped into the snow!Having all that experiences we realized it can not be better so we decided to start heading home.
As I mentioned that
was awesome weekend, like most weekends planned by Orit!
