So my boyfriend and I made the long car trip up to Quebec Canada for our Ice Hotel experience. We went with his brother and a few other couples. Such a fun weekend, despite all the driving.
We got up bright and early (or should i say "dark and early"?)on Saturday morning, around 4:30 am, and left the house by 5:15 am to begin our long drive. It was a very familiar drive for me, considering that I used to make the long treck up through the Adirondack Mountains to get up to SUNY Potsdam for school. This was just a longer version of that same trip. If I can make it from Long Island to Florida by car, I can handle NYC to Quebec City. The drive UP was actually quite entertaining. We all talked a lot about music and shared funny stories of school and travel. It helped the time pass. Of course, my boyfriend and his brother can always find something to talk about. I made it up to Quebec (10 hour trip) sans naps, stayed up the whole time. The shit coffee from the rest stop Dunkin Donuts probably helped a bit. They didnt even accept Dunkin Donuts gift cards, whats with that crap?! And believe me, nothing is lovlier than interacting with a person who clearly hates their miserable 5am job at the Dunkin Donuts rest stop. We certainly didnt get service with a smile. Not my fault thats where they ended up in their lives. There are plenty of days that I hate my job, but I dont take it out on our patients! These guys were schmucks. Anyways...lost my train of thought...bad coffee. PERIOD.
Of course we all experienced the unnecessary jitters of crossing the US/Canadian boarder, as though we were smuggling heroin, or Mexicans across the boarder or something. Whats with that? we're totaly innocent, we know we have nothng to hide, and yet somehow these boarder people still have the ability to intimidate you. I wonder if they had to take classes on intimidation. Luckily we werent detained or questioned or anything, and easily passed the boarder with flying colors.
Canada...Jeez, what a lovely country. Nothing is a less welcoming sight than miles (or should I say kilometers?) and miles of absolutely nothing. It was desolate. We passed a couple factories, a few warehouses, and a couple randomly scattered mountains...but other than that....flatness, flatness surrounded by nothingness, and topped with plenty of grayness. Who the hell planned out the settlement of this country?! The look of it after crossing the boarder is enough to make someone want to turn around and go home.
What worse is that its hours and hours between cities. Theres no suburban towns lining the streets between cities as you find in the US. In fact, its much like driving through the great planes of the USA, nothingness on top of nothingness...a random farm house, thats it. A misery of a drive. If you can afford the luxuries of flying to Canadian cities, I suggest you do it. The drive is worthless, you wont be passing any beautiful rivers, large canyons, amazing landmarks. At the most, maybe you'll catch a local Canadian on a snowmobile.
Anyways, Quebec City sneaks up on you...suddenly you see it in the distance, you cross a bridge with the most fantastic scenery, frozen over rivers below, blue frozen waterfalls-beautiful. And all the beauty comes out of no where, after hours and hours of driving through crap.
The city itself is amazing, manicured streets with lovely homes. Suburbs surrounding the city itself, big old official looking buildings. Perfectly plowed streets. If theres one thing those Canadians know how to do well..its plow! (Nothing like a good old generalization about Canadians)
We got to our hotel around 2:30pm and settled in. 4 of us in 1 room. No sex tonight (the eve of Valentines Day), particularly not with my boyfriends brother and his girlfriend in the next bed. I mean MAYBE we couldve pulled it off if we were still in college, and rather than a sibling in the next bed, we had a passed-out-drunk roomate. I wont deny that I've been there before. But siblings are a deal breaker.
We decided to explore the street, people were already out getting their drink on, so we decided to join in. Quebec is cold as fuck in February. I put on 2 layers of clothing, thinking it would suffice because it was daytime and the sun was still out. What a joke! All of us were freezing our asses off in the first hour or so of being there, we had to head back to the room to layer up. Once layered up, e decided to make the rounds at the Ice Carnival down the hill behind our hotel. They had amazing snow statues. We all hopped onto a raft snow ride that we paid 1.50$ Canadian to experience, it was short..but fun. As the sun set on the city, it started to get even colder. Jus having your hands expeoed to the air for a moment made them hurt. We were all attacked by the unavoidable "Water boogies" as I like to call them. The red, running nose, where your boogers drip out like water. The cold does weird things to your body. I experienced the frozen ass as well..the feeling where your ass is so cold, that it almost feels wet, like you pissed yourslf, but you didnt, your ass is just like an ice cube.
After freezing our water boogies off at the carnival, we headed back to the hotel for the evening festivities. When we got up there we saw that more and more people began to line the streets for the parade...set to begin promptly at 8pm. YEAAAAAHHH that didnt happen.
We got some drinks on the street, hoping the alcohol would warm us from the inside out, and threw on as many layers as possible to fight off the cold as we stood and waited for the parade to begin. We waited...and waited...and waited. Out in the freezing cold for an hour an a half. I just about lost my nerve and headed inside several times. Eventually I gave up and satinside a nice warm cigar bar. Of course, the moment I went inside, the parade came through. But I watched from the warmth of a smokey bar through the windows, while my boyfriend and everyone else braved the cold and watched from outside. As the parade came to an end we all decided to hit up the "Dance party". Seriously...an outdoor party, where you just dance. Hey, what else are Candians to do to keep warm? We walked down the street to this big castle made of ice, you couldnt go inside it or anything, it was for asthetics only, but it was very cool to look at, it was all lit up. They were playing a lot of early 90s hits from singers like La Bouche. I imagine that being as far north as Quebec is, it probably took the past 15 years for them to finally get word of those bands/songs. ha!
So what did we do for the next hour or so? Dance! we jumped around and sang along to all the old Bar/Bat Mitzvah hits of our childhood. There was a Canadian dance group wearing HORRENDOUS outfits, sequins and hot colors and cowboy hats and fringes. yuck! I guess they were suppose to look sexy...and I guess they were suppose to look talented. But much like the music, it ended up looking more like a dance routine a couple 13 yr olds put together to do at a Bat Mitzvah.
After the dance party we headed back to the room for some more booze and some more layers of clothing. I swear, it felt like I COULDNT get drunk, no matter how hard I tried. That cold air is sobering. Although my boyfriend didnt seem to have a problem raising his blood alcohol level. Me and the boyfriend, along with his brother and his girlfriend headed to this really cool bar across from our hotel. Its too bad we waited as long as we did to find this place, it was a great bar, cooler than most places you find yourself at on a random Saturday night in Manhattan. The downside? The mandatory coat check policy. I mean, I guess I understand it...with all those big bulky down coats that everyone has to wear in that weather, I guess they'd take up a lot of space if people brought them into the bar and left them on chairs and stuff, but boy do they jack up those coat check fees.
Shortly after arriving, my brothers boyfriend and his girl decided to head back to the room. I can only assume that they wanted to find some time for a little Pre-Valentines day fuckfest, but then again, thats just an assumption. My boyfriend and I decided to stay out though. I thnk we only made it for another 45 minutes or so, we had been awake since 4:30am, and now it was about 12:30am the next day...we had been awake aprox 20 hours...that gets painful after a while. So we got our coats and headed back to the hotel. When we arrived, we had to knock on the door about 5 times before anyone answered (Sex much?).
I was ready for bed the moment I got in the door, began pulling off all my layers of clothing and changing into pajamas. My boyfriend however, always finds ways to randomly stall before he goes to bed after a night of drinking, doing stupid things and being silly. I find myself yeling at him like I'm his mother sometimes. At least he keeps me laughing though, even when hes annoying the crap out of me after 20 hours of being awake.
The 4 of us (m and my boy, his brother and his girlfriend) chatted a bit in the dark before we all eventually passed out. My boyfriend playfully trying to fondle me under the covers....guess he didnt mind that his brother was in the next bed-but I did.
Heh.
