We got to add a brand new experience to our winter bucket list this year! My parents-in-law gifted us with a stay in the Hôtel de Glace. The hotel is located 30 mins outside of Quebec City, Quebec at Hotel Valcartier. We had an amazing weekend and highly recommend booking a trip to Hotel Valcartier in particular.
We drove to Hotel Valcartier on Friday and arrived around 5 pm. We checked into our hotel room for the night and then wandered the hotel/resort to get the lay of the land. We found Resto Safari where we ate basically every meal and then the Espace des Jeux (Arcade). We loaded up an arcade card and played games for a bit before heading back to our room to relax and watch episodes of Outlander. We just got into the series and are hooked.
The next day we “slept in”. Me until 6 am and I woke Mike up around 8 am. We headed down to Resto Safari for their breakfast buffet and then headed over to the spa where I had booked us a couple’s massage around 9 am.
We stayed after our massages and did the thermal circuit. The spa has a quiet relaxing zone, an outdoor hot tub, an indoor hot tub, a Finnish sauna, 2 indoor cold plunges, a steam room and an indoor/outdoor plunge pool.
We had a lovely relaxing morning. My only complaint about the spa is they let in families with a few young kids that were quite loud in the thermal circuit area.
That afternoon, we bought tickets to the outdoor tubing areas and spent the afternoon tubing down multiple runs. That was one of my favourite parts of the trip. In hindsight, I would have actually booked the Ice Hotel room on Friday night and then done tubing the next morning, hit the indoor water park in the afternoon and then warmed up in the spa in the evening.
That all being said after we were done tubing we checked in at the front desk for our Ice Hotel stay. We already had our hotel room but if we had just checked in we’d receive a hotel room at Hotel Valcartier so we could put our stuff down and shower. I was really curious to know how many people actually end up bailing on sleeping in the ice hotel and just go back to the hotel room.
We then headed over to the Ice Hotel that is open to the public and walked around to look at all the rooms.
I couldn’t believe how many rooms there were! There were 30 with the majority of them being themed rooms and then a few au natural or plain rooms. Each room had lights and a curtain for a door. We got to stay in Room 17 that was pirate/adventure themed.
You don’t actually get private access to the rooms until 9 pm. At 9, we headed down to the ice hotel area so we could grab our complimentary drinks and I could do a dip in the hot tubs. The complimentary drinks were absolute garbage but were included in the price of the room so not a big deal.
There are 3 hot tubs and 1 sauna available for ice hotel guests. We also saw on the map that there were 2 rooms with private hot tubs and saunas and 2 rooms with private hot tubs. I dried off in the sauna and we went inside to get ready for the night. We donned our long underwear and headed back out to our rooms.
When we got back to our room, there were big bags with our sleeping bags on the bed. We rolled them out and found a sleeping bag insert and a small pillow inside. So Mike and I have been winter camping before, this was just winter glamping!
One of my biggest questions was “Where do we go to the bathroom?” There were 3 port o potty’s around the hotel rooms and we had one just down the hallway from our room. Since we had headed into our hotel room to get changed we used the washroom there but I did test a port o potty out before going to bed to try and empty my bladder fully. They had little space heaters inside so it was nice and toasty and clean.
Before you go to sleep they recommend tucking your boots inside each other to keep humidity out. While my boots were cold when I put them on in the morning the insides were nice and dry.
They say the inside of the hotel is around – 3 to -5 C.
My only complaint about the room was our curtain didn’t block out the hallway light and our room was quite bright all night. We pulled our hats over our eyes but if you go I recommend bringing an eye mask!
