For as many summers as I can remember, I would always bring up the idea of travelling over Christmas vacation. I love Christmas, I love the excitement leading up to Christmas, but I rarely enjoy the time between Christmas and New Years. It always seems that everything happens before the 25th and then nothing….crickets. Finally, this year we pulled the trigger and booked a trip. Quebec Here we come!
We left Christmas Day around 3pm, we wanted to make sure we still visited our families. We decided to only go as far as Moncton, assuming we would all be exhausted from the day, and that was a good decision, we did end up having a 5am wake up call Christmas Morning.
We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express on Mapleton Road. We specifically booked this hotel for the pool, but ended up being way too tired to even check it out. We were however, extremely grateful and impressed by the lady working the breakfast in the morning. It was a great breakfast and she paid special attention to our two kids and helped them with their inquisitiveness. She answered all their questions and even took them through the process of making their own pancakes. She certainly made our stay extra special!
The next morning we left fairly early and drove to our Airbnb in Quebec. Our kids were troopers and we only had to stop once for a gas/bathroom/tim hortons break. I did gift them a binder with some printables in it to keep them busy on the drive. Their favourite thing to do in the car though was to look at photo albums of all their previous years adventures.
We arrived in Quebec around 3pm so we settled into the Airbnb and grabbed some groceries at a local IGA. This was our first experience doing Airbnb on our own, but it certainly won’t be our last! We had a two bedroom apartment, fairly close to the city with a washer and dryer for less than half the cost of a hotel room.
That evening we went to Festilumières at Aquarium du Quebec. They outdoor portion of the aquarium is all done up in lights. There are bouncy castles, games, slides, live music, and some very fun photo ops. The only animals we were able to see that night were the arctic foxes, walrus’, and seals. None of the indoor buildings were open, but they didn’t need to be. For $35 for a family of 4, it was well worth it. Although the bouncy castles perplexed me, we skipped that spot as the kids were all bundled up in their snowsuits and I wasn’t sure taking parts off or getting sweaty underneath was really worth the effort. The slides and Walrus’ were certainly a highlight of the night. We didn’t pre purchase tickets for this event before we got there, but I would recommend it, you get to skip the ticket line and go right in.
The next day, it was borderline freezing rain so we headed to Bora Parc, the indoor water park at Village Vacances Valcartier. This was our first time there, so it was a learning curve. Neither myself nor my husband speaks very much French, so there were times on this day that we struggled with communication with some of the employees, but enough was able to be exchanged that we managed. We pre-purchased our tickets for here, and I would suggest you do the same for the water park. They only allow a certain number of people into it, so you wouldn't want to get there and not be able to go in the day you want. You can rent lockers there for $10 with an additional $10 deposit. You can rent the lockers using a credit card, but all deposits are given back as cash. They have different lockers for the water park and snow park, so make sure you get the area you need. They also offer free coat check, which is great for the water park day. Children under 1m are free, between 1m and 1.32m are $35 and above 1.32m is $42, those are for the day passes, evening are cheaper. Make sure you bring your own towels too as there are none on site, unless you go to the gift shop and buy some.
Bora Parc itself is not a huge space, but there is a LOT of different things in the space and it is organized well so that it doesn’t feel crowded at all. They have many many slides for kids and adults of all ages. They have a really neat surf wave ride that my kids thoroughly enjoyed watching people try. Kids over a metre can go on the majority of the slides, kids under a metre can go on many slides with an adult and some on their own. The Riveria is not to be confused with a lazy river, it is more like a rapid ride. It is great, but kids under a metre can’t go on it even with a parent. If you have an adventurous little one, you might want to wait until they are 1 metre tall before you go. We found the parc very clean and well staffed with lifeguards. There are baskets inside the actual water park where you can store towels, but they don’t lock so I wouldn’t recommend storing anything valuable in there. The keys for the locker are on safety pins, so we just pinned it to our bathing suits. We ate lunch at the restaurant attached to the water park. For $40 we got enough chicken fingers, fries, and drinks for our family of four. The best part about the restaurant is that you can go in wrapped in a towel and it had large glass windows overlooking the surfing ride. Instant entertainment for the kids. It also gave us a chance to see many more slides that we hadn’t noticed while in the park. The only downfall was the trips back and forth to the locker for the wallet. Our kids easily spent 5 hours at this water park, and probably would have stayed longer, but Mommy wanted to check out the ice hotel.
The Hotel de Glace wasn’t supposed to be open while we were there over Christmas, but I was so excited when they opened parts of it early. We bought the tickets that included a cocktail, because if you’re going to check out an ice bar, you might as well get the full experience! Again, kids under 1m are free, between 1m and 1.32m was $22 and above 1.32m was $30. All tickets include a cocktail, but only the two above 1.32 were alcoholic, obviously. It truly is amazing how they can construct and design such a space. The kids were fascinated about all the different sculptures around the hotel. We did a self guided tour and checked out some of the rooms, Ben wanted to stay in one of the rooms overnight, maybe next time. The ice bar was busy, but also extremely interesting. The choice of cocktails with your ticket were pretty extensive. You were able to choose one of the $9 drinks, anything more then $9 you just paid the difference. The kids had many options as well, but chose lemonade. The drinks were served in ice glasses, think a large ice cube with a hole drilled partially through it. This was strangely a highlight of my trip.
Outside the Hotel de Glace was a maple syrup shack. For $3 you could have maple syrup drizzled on a snow table and using a stick roll your own maple syrup taffy. It wasn’t super cold that day and the maple syrup melted pretty quick even after a cooling period in the snow, but it was a perfect sugar pick me up after a full day at Valcartier.
We figured the weekends at Valcartier would be busy so we avoided the place for the next two days.
Saturday we checked out downtown Old Quebec, definitely not the highlight for our 5 and 3 year olds. They did enjoy riding the Funicular and got to ride free with two paying adults. The made a few comments about how old the buildings were, and enjoyed the choclatine at one of the cafes, but in terms of getting much more out of the place, I think they might be too young to appreciate it. Because of this, we didn’t spend as long there as I had planned. So after some down time at the apartment, we headed to Montmorency Falls. For $50, we paid for parking, park entrance, and gondola rides. You could have gone to the top of the falls, found parking on a side street and just paid the park entrance, but the gondola ride was part of the experience the kids wanted to try. We spent probably 2 hours in total at the park. We took the gondola up to the top of the falls, walked the path to a viewing deck, and then took the gondola back down. We could have walked to the bridge and across the falls, but some little legs were getting pretty tired.
After a trip to St. Hubert’s restaurant, which is a must for us when visiting Quebec, we had a relaxing evening back at our Airbnb.
Sunday we went to Mega Parc at Les Galeries de la Capitale. We had some struggles here figuring out the best option for us in terms of bracelets or points and how to get a locker, what entrance, etc. Parking at entrances G or F, put you closest to the parc. If you’re just going to skate, don’t buy the bracelets, you can go right to the skating desk and pay for everything there. If you’re going for more then the skating, it gets more complicated. Skating was definitely our favourite part or the park. It was a cool track ice surface that took you around some of the other attractions. They had skating aids for the littles that you could rent, that doubled as a seat when they got tired. It was the Sunday after Christmas, so the mall itself was busy and so was Mega Parc. We chose to buy bracelets for all four of us, it was $115 and probably not the most cost effective option. The majority of the rides that the kids went on, they went on by themselves. The carousel was beautiful and the car ride was hilarious to watch the kids go around the corners on, but there were very few rides that the adults wanted to go on. We were able to meet up with some friends on this day too, which made the rides a bit more fun for all the kids. We did end up staying at the parc until it closed at 5pm that day.
Both families headed to dinner together too and this night we checked out a chain restaurant called La Cage - Brasserie Sportive, similar to Jack Astors or Boston Pizza, but in my opinion, BETTER!
Monday we headed back to Village Vacances Valcartier and checked out the Winter Playground, this is the only place like it in North America, and definitely a place we feel everyone should check out, kids or not. Again, prices were according to height. Under 1 m were still free, 1m-1.32 m was $27 and over 1.32m was $35. The map said they had a kid zone, but we couldn’t find it and it seemed like they usually have one, it just wasn’t open yet. Our littlest, even though she was under a metre and unsure of going down such a big hill so fast in a tube, was able to go down slides on mommy's lap. She wasn’t allowed on some slides there though because of her height, but she certainly didn’t mind that. They have rope tows with tubes attached to it, to get you up the hill, timing your drop in to the tube can be tricky, but especially for littles and for mommies with littles on their lap, but the operators are extremely friendly and will often stop the lift when necessary. This winter playground is like a big ski hill but meant for tubes. The slides are all labelled similar to skiing as well, green, blue, black diamond, double black diamond. Brinley and I stuck to the green, while Daddy and Ben checked out everything up to a black diamond and a snow raft where ten people go in the same tube for specific trails. You can go down yourself, or you can attach your tube to someone elses and go down together. There are signs at each slide that tells you the maximum number of tubes that can be attached together for each one. While not mandatory, it was suggested to us to have helmets for the kids and goggles for everyone, I would concur with this and would probably make sure I had my own ski helmet next time. We had brought a helmet for Brinley, but didn’t for Ben, a quick trip to Walmart when we arrived in Quebec fixed this.
Inside the lodge, there is a downstairs with lockers and tables, bathrooms, chairs, etc. We rented a locker and also brought our own lunch this time. We kept the lunch in the locker and then were able to come in and grab a snack whenever we needed to. We probably stayed about 4.5 hours here and only left when we did because of a storm coming and we wanted to start heading home earlier than we planned.
To say we enjoyed our trip would be an understatement, it is most definitely a place we will return to again, maybe next time at March Break. When we go again, there are some changes to our itinerary that I would make. I would potentially skip Mega Parc. The skating was really neat, but the winter playground also had a really neat looking skating area. I also would have loved to have tried dog sledding or ice fishing, but those were all sold out by the time I had thought about it. Even though the kids didn’t appreciate Old Quebec as much as I would have liked, I would still keep it on the itinerary as I do think their appreciation and interest would grow over time.
When we left Quebec at 4pm on the Monday, we were able to make it to Woodstock NB. The next day, again with minimal stops, we made it home, before the storm really hit our area. Our kids far exceeded our expectations for travel in the car, so you know what the means to me?!?!
LETS START PLANNING ANOTHER ROAD TRIP!
Where should we go next?!
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