Quebec City!

Saturday we walk down and check out the Red Bull Crashed Ice track. The scene of the event we will be watching that night. The World Championships for this ice skating downhill speedcross. Which translates into INSANITY!!! I know Canadian's take skating seriously, but this takes it to a whole different level!!! This track was built right through the middle of the city!!

 INSANE!!! The city is built on a hill, so it was essentially perfect. No video, the even occurred at night. It was HUGE!! Loud music, tons of people, crowds, noise, and lots and LOTS of smokers. What??? Quebec is a very clean city. We hardly saw any trash on the streets, but for the cigarette butts. I mean serious amount of cigarette butts on the ground. GROSS!! And that night in the crowds we couldn't get away from the cigarette smoke. I smelled like it, my clothes smelled like it, it was really very annoying.

 After checking out the race set up, which was really amazing - It must have taken forever to built!! - We headed out to check out the Ice Hotel. Completely made of ice. Really??? Really!!! You can stay there, if you want. In sleeping bags and long johns! People actually DO, I guess. They get married there. WHAT??? WHY???

 Ummm.........no.........

 Even with a fire place in the room..........no.........

 tables made of ice...........

 The great hall.

 The chandelier made of ice.............

 One of the bigger rooms...........

 Um......no.........

 OK, so the wall sculptures were cool........

 The hallway. There are no locks on the doors. Just drapes.

 The chapel.

 Driving around the city we came across these very cool sculptures of horses.........

 Very cool!!!

So, Quebec City was very pretty. Clean. GREAT food, we ate WELL. But, the cigarette smoking really put a damper on things. We had a non-smoking room in a non-smoking section, but I am SURE the guy next door was sitting in his bathroom with his fan on smoking. It would travel into our bathroom and stink up our room. We tried closing our bathroom door and leaving our fan running. Didn't work enough, we still stunk. The smell was really annoying. And walking around the city, so many people smoke!!! Cigarette butts littered the very clean streets. GROSS!!!!

Plus, it was FUCKING COLD!! OMG, even Rich who is pretty tough and hardy tried walking the city early Saturday morning, but came home cold. We were prepared for it Saturday night for the race, but still even in my big winter snow boots I got cold. Probably had I worn my snow pants I would have been OK, but I just had long johns with my jeans. We noticed many people wore snow pants. They must live there. They know. It was COLD!! Colder than it usually is this time of year. We still very much enjoyed the show. It was INSANE!!!! Canadians love their skaters, but the guy from Switzerland won.