Getaway: Quebec's 400th Birthday Bash
Editor's note: For Jan. 16 publication
Quebec City is turning 400, and everyone is invited to what promises to be a major 10-month celebration.
The city on the St. Lawrence has been sprucing itself up for the 400th celebration, even adding attractions including a new 1.5-mile riverside park, Promenade Samuel de Champlain, named for Quebec's founder. Expect the whole city to be bigger, better, flashier and brighter.
The charming city's legendary bonhommerie (good natured-ness) will of course be well on display. And this includes at Quebec's annual Winter Carnival, great fun every year, but really expected to outdo itself when it gets under way next month (Feb. 1 to 17).
As the first major festival of the city's 400th year, the winter celebration will feature a gala one-hour parade the nights of Feb. 9 and 16 - all new, with new floats and characters, original music and multimedia projections on buildings along parade route. Bundle up and be part of the admiring crowd.
But Winter Carnival is a lot more than a parade. It's a big outdoor party.
Snow sculptures line a boulevard across the Plains of Abraham (the historic battlefield park), which becomes a giant winter playground with tubing, games and snow castles for kids and live entertainment, dog sledding and sleigh rides for everyone. Elsewhere, crowds will cheer a canoe race across the half-frozen St. Lawrence, where teams alternately paddle through the water and push the huge canoes over the tilting ice flows.
More adventure awaits just outside the city at Duchesnay, where a new hotel is built each year, completely of ice. Guests can enjoy evening drinks at an ice bar before retiring to comforter-heaped beds carved of ice, each in a designer room with ice walls, floor and ceiling.
While all of this involves cold-weather fun, it's just the beginning of the $80 million-plus 400th celebration, which is on until October. While Quebec serves up all its usual pleasures - including an endearing Old World charm - there is much special for the anniversary period.
Nearly every place in Quebec is involved with history, culture and food.
Restaurants are boasting original 400th menus and dishes, museums have special exhibits, even the Quebec Symphony gets into the act with 1,000 musicians performing Mahler's 8th Symphony on March 18.
Other festival highlights are:
Espace 400 (June 3 to Oct. 19) Welcome center for the summer 400th festivities is this exhibition and gathering space at Bassin Louise, in the Old Port. Visitors are invited to take a suitcase and follow an immigrant's travels, perhaps one of the 500,000 Irish who arrived in Quebec before moving to New England and elsewhere. Here, too, will be daily entertainment, contemporary designer gardens and the multimedia Image Mill, billed as the largest outdoor projection ever made - a 40-minute show highlighting the city's history will be projected nightly (June 20 to July 29) on an enormous wall of grain elevators across the river.
Happy Birthday, Quebec City! (July 3 to 5) Beginning with a Solemn Mass at the cathedral, July 3, the exact date of Samuel de Champlain's landing in 1608, the party includes a military parade, a spectacular opening show on the Plains of Abraham and a torch-lit parade. An urban opera on July 5, will use city landscape as backdrop for a musical/visual work recounting Quebec's 400 years and featuring more than 1,000 entertainers.
The Louvre in Quebec (June 5 to Oct. 26) The Musee National des Beaux-arts du Quebec (www.mnba.qc.ca) will host an exhibit of more than 250 artworks from the Louvre. These works - from the Oriental, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities collections - rarely leave Paris.
The Walking Road (Aug. 15) The full moon will light the St. Lawrence River, which becomes the stage for this all-night extravaganza of acrobatics, dance and projections.
Celine Dion on the Plains of Abraham (Aug. 22) Quebec singing idol Celine Dion will perform with several other artists in a free public concert. For information on seating, visit www.myQuebec2008.com, after April 15.
Cirque du Soleil (Oct. 19) The grand finale of the 400th anniversary activities is an original show by performers gathered from Cirque du Soleil's troupes throughout the French-speaking world.
If You Go
Getting there: Delta (www.delta.com) flies direct from Boston to Quebec twice daily.
Staying there: The Fairmont Chateau Frontenac is the Grand Dame of Quebec hotels with a central location and views over the river. Room rates from $250 for two; 418-692-3861, www.fairmont.com/frontenac.
Auberge Louis Hebert is a boutique hotel opposite the Plains of Abraham. Rooms with dinner start at $200 for two; 418-525-6449, www.louishebert.com.
L'Auberge Le Vincent is modern, hospitable, located in the heart of the city and affordable, at about $150 for two. 418-523-5000, www.aubergelevincent.com.
Ice Hotel Quebec offers packages with dinner from $600 for two; 877-505-0423; www.icehotel-canada.com
For more information, www.myquebec2008.com.