Michelle's Travel Adventures

Stephen turns 60 this year, and he decided he wanted to have a year of travel as his birthday gift and instead of any parties. And for the first trip of the year, he decided he wanted to go skiing in Quebec. We skied Le Massif the year before, and we have also skied at Mont St Anne and Tremblant before, and we wanted to go somewhere we haven’t been before. After doing some research we decided to explore the Eastern Township ski hills. So we booked a beautiful AirBnB condo in Orford to be our home base for the week.

Saturday, February 17

We decided to make this a road trip and drive instead of flying to Montreal. We left home around 7:30AM on Saturday morning, picked up Macy’s friend Rachel, and drove about 6 hours to Edmundston where we stopped for lunch at Pur & Simple. It was a great stop with a mix of hearty and healthy on the menu and it was relatively quick. And then on we went to Quebec City for the night. We arrived in the city just before dusk, around 4:30 and checked into our hotel. We stayed at Hotel Manoir Victoria, a cozy little spot in the centre of the old city. We attempted a walk before dinner but it was brutally cold, so we hopped in and out of shops (we spent quite a bit of time at the candy store Sugar Daddy) along our short route to dinner at the St-Alexander Pub. Despite having made reservations and hoping we would be sat on the main floor of the pub where there was a band playing, we were instead seated at their worst table, which was upstairs in the hallway and an arms length away from the bathrooms. We could literally see into the mens washroom every time a guy went in or out of the bathroom. Classy. Anyways, we were excited it was our first night of our trip, a band was playing down stairs, and we tried to make the best out of it. Our server was sweet and apologetic about it all. We ordered chicken wings to start. Stephen and Rachel had the pulled bbq chicken sandwich, Macy had the Montreal smoked meat sandwich, and we all agreed that I won dinner that night because I ordered the croque monsieur, which was delicious! For drinks, we started off with dirty Bloody Caesars. Not sure why caesars are called Bloody Caesars in Quebec. But they were tasty and then we split a bottle of Canadian wine form Mission Hill and Stephen was sticking to the Guinness

Sunday, February 18

The next morning we walked to Paillard for coffee and croissants. If you don’t know this about me, coffee and croissants is just about one of my all time favourite combos! AHHHHHHhhhh!!!! I LOVE croissants!!!! I’m like the kid in the viral video going on about corn, but swap out the corn for croissants and that would be me. However the line that Sunday morning was absolutely ridiculous!!! it took over 40 minutes waiting in the long, twisty lineup just to order!!! Mon dieu!!!! Anyways, we finally got our beloved croissant and coffee order. And they were fantastic.

After breakfast we did some shopping at Simons. Then we took Macy and Rachel to see the Frontenac, and did a little exploring around. We had lunch at Bistro 1640 and had the most amazing duck confit poutine and French onion soups. Stephen set the lofty goal of having a daily poutine on this trip. Spoiler alert: we failed on getting poutine every day because Stephen ended up getting very sick all week, but we did our best to live up to his dream. And this ended up being our favourite poutine and French onion soup of the entire trip!

With our bellies full of poutine and soup, we headed to Magog (about a 2 1/2 hour drive) for groceries and an SAQ stock up. Unfortunately the SAQ was closed, so thankfully we could get some grocery store wine and beer. By the time we made it to our AirBnB in Orford it was getting dark so we made quick work of unloading the truck, settling in and making a delicious bbq steak dinner. We were in bed early tonight in anticipation for our first full day skiing in the morning!

Monday February 19

Stephen woke up this morning with a bit of a headache, we chalked it up to too much wine with dinner and not enough water. He popped an Advil and we got on with our day. The Mont Orford ski hill was under a 5 minute drive from our condo. Mont Orford has got some great terrain, there were no lift lines all day, and wide open trails. We had a blast! It was cold, about -19, but we took a mid morning break to warm up and another mid afternoon. We had lunch at the ski pub. We shared a poutine (it was pretty decent) We were all exhausted by 4pm, so we headed back to the condo and had apres ski beers in the sauna and then made pizzas for dinner

Tuesday, February 20

Today is Stephen’s 60th birthday!!! He woke up with an even worse headache. Took some more Advil.. We went to Owl’s Head today. It was just over a 30 minute drive from where we were staying in Orford. Pretty easy drive, saw some deer along the way. (AND I also managed to get J Lo concert tickets for this summer in Toronto on the drive to the ski hill!!!) There was a ski race the day we were there so that was kind of fun to observe ski race life again hahaha It was still pretty cold today, about -16, but the snow conditions were good. We had lunch in the pub again today. I got a Bloody Caesar (it was huge and delicious) and nachos to split and soups (the soups were just fair). By the time we got back to the condo, Stephen was feeling pretty lousy, and wasn’t sure if he was going to make it to his birthday dinner. After some more medicine, he rallied and decided he didn’t want to miss his birthday dinner! Which we were glad he didn’t miss it because it was such a fantastic dinner! We went to Bistro Koz in Magog. Koz is a Mediterranean restaurant with a focus on dishes from Greece, Lebanon and Turkey. We ordered family style and had: Babba ganoush, Brussel Sprouts and Kale salad, lamb kebabs, butternut squash gratin with pistachio yogurt, and seared tuna with pistachio and dukkah. They have a wonderful sommelier there whose name is Michael, and he took such good care of us and helped us choose the most amazing bottle of Lebanese red wine. It was so good! Macy also ordered a Bloody Caesar and it was also the best caesar of the trip! And for dessert we shared an order of housemade donuts in rose water syrup. ahhhhh soooo gooodddd!!

Wednesday, February 21

Definitely no getting around it, Stephen is progressively feeling worse each day, but he refuses to stay home, so he popped more Advil and on to Bromont today which was about another 30 minute drive. We were late arriving today because Stephen also had a CBC radio interview he was being interviewed for this morning so we were late getting out the door. We probably arrived around 10 am, but had difficulty getting the kiosk to print out our lift tickets so eventually we gave up and stood in the long queues to get our tickets printed off. So it was past 10:30 before we even lined up for the chair lift. This was by far the busiest of the ski hills we’ve been to so far on the trip. But it was a beautiful blue bird ski day and We had a blast skiing all over the mountain! Rachel and I who are more BLUE skiers and boarders, took on some moguls and black diamonds (by accident lol) We stopped for lunch around 1 pm, Stephen didn’t want to join us at the pub and decided to go rest at the main lodge. Our lunch at the pub was fantastic, we had window seats so we got to do some people watching too. I got a bloody Caesar and Macy had an orange creamsicle type of cocktail. We had the second best poutine of the trip, it was topped with thick slices of BACON!!! We also shared a pizza and caesar salad. Food was plentiful and delicious! Stephen joined us for one more run after lunch and decided he just couldn’t push himself any more so went back in to the lodge to try and find a place to nap. We decided to ski a few more runs and when we went in the pack up we found him literally asleep sitting in a chair! So we packed up and dropped him off at the condo and we headed back to Magog to the SAQ, and the grocery store. Tonight we made 2 types of pasta and a salad for a nice dinner in.

Thursday, February 22

Today we decided we had enough skiing and we NEEDED a spa day. Stephen was at this point way to sick to join us so he slept while we headed to Balnea Spa for the day. It’s located in Bromont, tucked away in the country side and overlooking Lac Gale and surrounding Appalachian mountains. It’s a picture perfect location. The largest infinity hot tub overlooks the lake and I found myself thinking of the similarity to Lake Louise (on a way less grand scale of course). Balnea has enough variety of hot, cold and rest areas that you can easily spend an entire day there. We arrived at opening which is 11 AM and stayed until 4pm. And we could have stayed longer but we had dinner reservations that we didn’t want to miss. Balnea has 4 saunas, 2 steam rooms, a variety of cold plunges and some unique rest area. One rest area has a wall of aquariums so you can watch tropical fish swim, another rest area is a small movie theatre room with theatre chairs, blankets and headphones so you can watch and listen to nature. One of the rest areas overlooked the lake and was so cozy and warm we actually napped for about an hour! Bliss!!! The spa restaurant was lovely too. Macy won lunch with the smoked salmon and caviar that she ordered. Rachel ordered a roast cauliflower, which was literally half a head of cauliflower with some sauce and nuts. I ordered the duck leg salad, which looked absolutely disgusting, but it tasted really good lol. The menu has wine suggestion pairings, which I enjoyed so I tried a French rose that paired with my duck salad. We split an order of chocolate chip cookies for dessert and I would recommend passing on those, they were stale and I’ve had better store bought cookies tbh.

After our day at the spa we returned back to our condo to get ready for dinner at Fondissimo in Magog. Stephen was probably feeling even worse then he was that morning so he stayed on the couch again. Fondissimo is a cool little spot, in the dark it looked like we were parking in a warehouse area (I wonder what it looks like in the day time) but the interior was super cute and cozy. They don’t have a liquor or wine menu, but allow you to bring your own bottle wine and don’t charge a corkage fee, which was fantastic!!! We ordered a classic cheese fondue that came with bread cubes, pickles, apples and sausage to dip. And we also ordered a Chinese broth fondue that we got chicken, beef, pork and sausage to dip. And each order came with an individual plate of potato wedges, salad and a veggie skewer which we dipped into the fondu. Then for dessert we ordered a chocolate fondue that came with a variety of sliced fruit and donut balls. The whole experience was super fun and unique. And we were there for 3 hours!!! hahahaha we closed the place down, I think our server thought we were nuts

Friday, February 23

We were up at 6 am and loaded the truck up and hit the road by 7:30. Stephen slept in the back while the 3 of us split the 10 hour drive home. We decided to go the shorter way through Maine, but honestly I think I would have rather gone through Quebec and New Brunswick on dived highway for easier driving. The temperature was 1 degree and snowed/rained for most of the drive home, which sucked, but we made it back around 7pm with only 2 stops for gas. Stephen is still resting and recovering and so far the rest of us have managed not to get sick! Overall we loved our time in the Eastern Townships. Lots of great skiing, restaurants, thermal spas and shops to keep everyone happy. I hope we’re able to get back there in the future and do it all again!