Getting Ready for the Big Cold

Here in Buffalo, winter sets in around November.  Winter is long, harsh, and don’t let anyone tell you how great it is.  I, for one, don’t like not seeing the sun for 6 months.  I like the sun.  It’s a pretty cool star.  And snow is pretty for all of 2 weeks surrounding Christmas and New Years’, until it gets polluted and dirty and soaks you to the bone.  There’s a reason that in the places where humans first settled, winter comes in the form of chilly rains and winds – our ancestors had sense.

Upon hearing my view of winter, one might be surprised to hear that I’m going to Quebec City, “the closest you can get to Europe in North America”, for a long weekend this January.  But I am.  It’s a school trip for French class.  Me and 40-something of my classmates are going to stay at L’Hotel du Vieux Québec (or The Old Quebec Hotel) for four days at Martin Luther King Jr. weekend (15th-18th).

I like to think living in Buffalo all my life has made me prepared for all sorts of winters.  That is a lie.  Upon doing my research, Quebecois winters are even worse than ours.  As such, I’ve bought a good deal of intense winter gear for this.  I’ll be as warm as warm can be in -10 degrees.  And besides, we’ll be having so much fun, the cold won’t bother me as it sometimes does.

Here’s a bit of what’s on the schedule:

• Dog sledding
• Tobogganing
• Place Royale and the Quartier Champlain
• The French and Latin Quarters
• St. Anne de Beaupre cathedral
• Snowshoeing
• Ice Hotel

My French teacher has also assured me that the food will be excellent.  What she says is an especially good creperie (is there such thing as a bad creperie?) is in the city, and we’ll be going to a sugar shack for a traditional Quebecois dinner (smoked maple syrup ham, sausages in maple syrup, homemade bread, potatoes, sugar pie, and maple taffy – we’ll have to roll back on to the bus!).  And of course we’ll have spare time for shopping and sightseeing (the shopping especially – it’s mostly girls on this trip).

I think all that’s well worth withstanding the cold, oui?