Daily, Photos, Vacation

Weekend trip to Quebec City: Part 2

1 Comment

Ah bonjour! Part deux of our weekend trip to fantastic Quebec City! We stayed at a small hotel, which was just perfect. Below is photos I snapped on our first day at Hotel Champlain.

We explored the city each night. Couldn’t get over how much it reminded me of Dublin. My Sister-In-Law is from there, you know (Dublin). I’ve been a few times! Random.Old-Quebec-City

Pub St. Patrick, on the street below our hotel.Old-Quebec-City-003

It was blistering cold this night with the snow blowing sideways at our faces. You can sort of see the snow blowing in the sky underneath that building’s lamp. Old-Quebec-City-002

Told ya I was bundled up the entire trip!Quebec-City

Standing next to the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac. Old-Quebec-City-005

European street views.Old-Quebec-City-004

I did a lot of running on this trip. Running to stay warm. Here I am getting a brisk walk in, which was slowly turning into a jog. Quebec-City-002

Uh! There’s a smile! Must’ve been the first day when I didn’t realize I would freeze my toosh off the entire time ;) Quebec-City-004

 What? You don’t do jumping jacks to stay warm? What’s so odd? :) Quebec-City-005

Carefully walking up the street. Slipped a few times. Wearing appropriate footwear during the Winter in Quebec is a must.Quebec-City-003

Little shops.Quebec-City-007

Couldn’t sit on this to watch a bit of tele! What a sweet ice chair, hey?Quebec-City-006

Beautiful shopping area in the downtown core. Quebec-City-008

Some side street near our hotel.Quebec-City-0010

I found a tunnel!Quebec-City-009

Hotel Frontenac, you can be seen everywhere! What do you think people would’ve thought in the 1800’s when they saw this magnificent building? Quebec-City-0011

Postcard worthy…Quebec-City-0012

Au revoir! Until next time Bonhomme! Stay tuned for my final Quebec City re-cap.Quebec-City-0013

View part one of our Quebec City trip.

Continue Reading

Daily, Photos, Vacation

Weekend trip to Quebec City: Part 1

8 Comments

I’m going to split our Quebec City weekend trip into a few posts. Only because I have narrowed the photos down to 61 photos in total. But I think posting all those into one single blog post would get a little out of hand and probably boring for those of you reading.

These photos are going to be out of order. I’ve sorted them by activity. Today’s blog post is going to be all about the Quebec City Carnival. :)

Quebec-Carnaval-004The very first photo of the weekend! The boyfriend and I walking around exploring Quebec City.Quebec-Carnaval-0010Bonhomme program for the weekend. All in French, as it would be.

Quebec-CarnavalThe carnival was a great spot for kids. I spent a lot of the time creepin’ the kid’s stage as it wasn’t much talking, but more dancing and fun activities to enjoy. One, being a tug-of-war event. I didn’t realize what the people in train conductor costumes were asking me to do (French speaking), but what I figured out was that it was a female vs male in the tug-of-war. The ladies and girls won one round. Hooray!

Quebec-Carnaval-002Waiting for the tug-of-war to star. Can you spot me? lolQuebec-Carnaval-007Boyfriend had a go at the tug-of-war as well. The men were right into it, and most definitely cheered when they won that round. Hilarious.

Quebec-Carnaval-003I bundled up like this for the duration of our three day trip. 6 layers on top, 3 on bottom, scarf around my face the entire trip.   Quebec-Carnaval-005Here I am checking out Bonhomme’s (that snowman shown below) Ice Home. Where he spends the rest of his winter’s stay ;) Quebec-Carnaval-006Bonhomme saying his farewells until next year’s carnival! At the beginning of the trip we were kind of freaked out by Bonhomme. But towards the end of our three day stay we were obsessed with him, and racing to get our photos taken with him. Hahaha.. Quebec-Carnaval-008These identical twin sisters performed an act in these inflatable balloons. Thoroughly enjoyed watching that a few times throughout the three days. Quebec-Carnaval-009Horse Derby was another main attraction, and quite scary to watch for the first time! I thought the men in those steel chairs were going to fly right off their seats with the horses racing around corners and doing 180’s.

Quebec-Carnaval-0011The downtown core of the city was full of ice sculptures and really talented artists made larger than life sized snow sculptures at the Carnival’s entrance.

Quebec-Carnaval-0012Another shot of the Bonhomme “ice hotel”. Look how HUGE it was! Impressive right?

Quebec-Carnaval-0013There was an area at the Carnival where they served (expensive) alcohol in these mini glasses. So cute.

Quebec-Carnaval-0014Another shot of the clear glass-like ice home.

Quebec-Carnaval-0015 Throughout the downtown area there were a bunch of ice sculptures as well. This outdoor patio of a bar had an ice bar with built in bailey’s booze froze right into it.

That’s a wrap, for the first post! Stay tuned for two more posts of our Quebec City Winter Carnival trip :)

Continue Reading

Beauty, Vacation

Head to toe pampering

No Comments

Before I get started on this post, I want to thank everyone who e-mailed and commented about my rough bitter-sweet week on Friday’s blog post. All of your comments brought a smile to my face, knowing that you’re all thinking about my family and I. So I wanted to let each and every one of you know how much I appreciated those words.

I’m so glad I ended up taking today off work. Our flight was delayed leaving Quebec City on this dingy little airplane with two seaters. Smallest plane I’ve been on in ages. It didn’t even have TV’s! lol I’m surprised they came around with complimentary juice, pop and water for us seeing how it was such a small plane. I slept the entire way, which is only a little under an hour and a half. Then our commute back home which was close to an hour.

My day off today consisted of 4 loads of laundry, 2 sets of dishes and I went to pick up Alfie this morning. He was crying and shaking, he was so excited to see me. I’ve never seen him act so insane. Just kept on bouncing up and down wanting me to pick him up, let him down, and pick him up again. Ha! The boyfriend hasn’t seen him yet since he’s not back from work yet, so that’ll be another exciting moment for Alfie in a few hours.

I just got back from the spa. Head to toe pampering, truly amazing on this snowy chilly Tuesday. However, it was delayed from this morning to this afternoon. But since I took the day off work, I didn’t have any qualms about it. I had a deep tissue massage that ended up being a little painful in certain parts (where my ‘knots’ were), and my first ever facial which was so interesting. I’m definitely could get used to getting a facial every so often. I found out so much information on my skin it was really quite interesting to hear. Especially the products I should be using on my face. Of course, the woman doing the facial tried to sell me on the creams she was using, which I wasn’t planning to do. I like to do my research before I go out and buy products. So I had her write all the information down, hah.

I have to gather all of the photos I took from this weekend and compile them into one large ol’ post for you guys to see what we did this weekend. I’ll tell you something, if we ever go there again in the winter, I’ll be bringing a lot more snow clothes to wear! We ended up wearing all of the clothes we brought each day. As in, layering a ridiculous amount to try and stay warm. I’m glad now I didn’t book us a room at the Ice Hotel! I ended up wearing leggings, 2 pairs of pants, 3 tank tops and 3 shirts/sweaters and a coat. Mind you, it was probably the wind that cut into us making us more colder. So in hindsight it would’ve been great to pack snow pants, and a snow jacket. I even had a thick scarf wrapped around my face with sunglasses and a thick winter hat on.

Quebec-Carnaval-003This is what I basically looked like the entire three days of our trip. At one point I was complaining so much I made us stop into the pharmacy and get those hand warmers that you stick into your gloves. Whoever invented those was genius and I love them for it.

I’ll leave you with that! See you tomorrow evening once I write up a little re-cap of our trip!

Continue Reading