Extreme Quebec 400-year-old city’s restaurants, hotels and vistas make Winter Carnival a memorable experience

The weekend we traveled north to Quebec to partake in the last days of Winter Carnival was the coldest it had been yet this year. As I layered on socks, sweaters and scarves, unwilling to let arctic air keep me from the outdoor pleasures of this cosmopolitan city, my ego started swelling along with my clothing mass, until I thought of titling this piece “Extreme Quebec.”

After all, we were outside a lot. And at least half an hour of this time outdoors was not in anything more protective than my bathing suit. But then I thought of what we could be doing: We could be spending the night in an igloo or prospector’s tent. We could be cross-country skiing with our gear on our backs to camp in a remote lean-to. We could be strapping on crampons to ascend an iced waterfall. Heck, we didn’t even sleep in the ice hotel.

In fact, we slept very comfortably in the Hilton Quebec, waking up to astounding vistas over the old city with the Chateau Frontenac visible from one corner, the carnival site ahead of us, and the St. Lawrence River beyond. Set at the edge of the old city, the Hilton remains one of the tallest buildings in the historic parliament district, so all rooms offer towering views. It was there that I had my outdoor swim, in a pool heated enough to make the air above it billow into clouds of steam. A fellow guest claimed her hair froze while she was out there; I don’t think I kept my head above water long enough to give it a chance. With the air hovering at zero degrees Fahrenheit, it was an act of courage just to bring my arms overhead to swim the crawl. But what an invigorating way to start the day! I was ready for anything after that.

I was even ready for an evening – though perhaps not an overnight – in the ice hotel. Located about 40 minutes west of the city, the hotel welcomes guests from January to April. The bluish-white structure is built from 12,000 tons of snow blown into a frame made from steel molds and wooden walls, then removed. Inside, stacks of ice blocks shape archways, walls and sculptures. Above, the ice soars 18 feet into the air.

In each room are ice platforms over which is placed a padded plank. Sleeping bag bundles – huge rolls about a yard in diameter – wait for frigid toes at the edge of each bed. Ice sculptors had a time with these rooms, etching the Great Wall of China across one wide wall, shaping a fierce ice dragon to rise over the bed. The hotel also sports an altar for those braving the start of their marriage in a chapel of ice. We stayed long enough for a drink and a dance or two to keep warm while our drinks, served in hollowed-out blocks of ice, cooled down even more.

Quebec City is busy at carnival, with lines for outdoor events and indoor restaurants. Still, it’s possible to find havens of quiet, moments when we could feel the ghosts of the city, nearly 400 years old. Centuries of travelers arrived by boat down the St. Lawrence River; centuries of craftsmen honed wood and blew glass, creating this bit of old-world civilization in the northern woods. These wafts of memories come especially strong in the region known as the lower city, or basse ville, with its stone buildings and steep cobblestone alleyways.

But carnival is not about quiet. It’s about spectacles, such as the row of snow sculptures from nations as tropical as Kuwait and Lebanon. Much of our time was spent at carnival center, the Place Desjardins, at the edge of the old city with its ice palace and ice castle slide and some amazing snow sculptures, looking even more powerful because of the familiarity of the medium. How big a step is it from snowman to snow sculpture? Could I, too, sculpt a fierce-looking tortoise or the immensely sad woman, five times the size of my own figure, speaking of the horrors of war? Possibly so – but probably not.

Another cherished carnival event is the snow bath in which a few self-chosen folks bathe in the snow wearing nothing but swimsuits and possibly a grass skirt, wallowing in drifts as if they were pigs in mud. Safely wrapped in snow pants and down jackets, we joined the crowd of onlookers for a moment, then headed to a nearby hill for snow tubing, where we careened and turned for a delightfully long time, gripping strangers’ hands and shoulders, screams pouring out of our mouths just for the fun of it.

Sometime within all that looking and screaming, we also ate. There are such great restaurants in Quebec that I’ve come to believe that almost any place will offer unexpected delights and I don’t even need to remember restaurant names. In case that’s not absolutely true, let me recommend a $52 Canadian splurge at the Restaurant the 47th Parallel, where a multi-course banquet is served, a different cuisine each month. February featured France, and our dinner swept from crayfish to soup to rabbit to fish, to a belief that we couldn’t possibly eat anything more until a trio of airy custards arrived, topped by a lemon madeleine as if the chef wanted to be certain we’d hold this place in deep memory forever.

It was that afternoon that we decided to escape carnival entirely, strap on our skis and head down the Plains of Abraham, the Quebec City park on a plateau above the St. Lawrence. This vast snowy plain is groomed with more than six miles of trails, including one beneath an avenue of trees close by the river. Here we skied for more than an hour, nearly alone in the center of a city where thousands of carnival revelers had gathered. As we got to the end of this trail, built on the spot where 247 years before, the French went down in defeat to the British, the sun set into a smoky dusk to the west, while over our left shoulders, the full moon rose.

Even without the madeleine, I would remember Quebec.

Donna Gold can be reached at carpenter@acadia.net.