Ice Hotel - Day 2 - Part I
Bonour. Je sais tres bien. Well, I'm sure you are all wondering about our night in the Hotel Le Glace.
So yesterday's excursion didn't really go as planned. We did do a lot of walking around but we didn't go snowshoeing. Its hard to really have a plan when you're homeless. We had to check out of our room by noon and didn't have orientation for our night in the ice hotel until 5pm so basically had to keep moving or freeze in place. Julia had major sock issues throughout the day, so most of it was spent with her changing her socks and baking in front of the fireplace. We basically wasted the day but we were psyched for out 5pm mandatory orientation.
The girl leading our orientation, Stephanie, while extremely funny in her delivery of information, did not instill me with a whole lot of confidence. She sits down on this big box, smiles, takes the sleeping bag out of its bag and basically goes "this is your sleeping bag, theres a liner in your pillow so don't lose the pillow. When you get in for the night make sure to change your socks and put your old socks in your shoes. Any questions?" I'm thinking "yeah, how the hell am I going to zip thing up and make sure no cold air gets in." I honestly wasn't too worried about the overnight part, after all this is what we were here for so we were staying no matter what!
After orientation and an uneventful dinner, we came back to the ice hotel and went to the N'Ice bar for our complimentary drink. I had a Little Rudolph (vodka, midori, strawberry-kiwi juice) and Julia ordered something call Sea of Ice. Think Robatussin and you know what drink hers tasted like. Our drinks WERE served in glasses made of ice and the drinks were only $5.25 if you held on to your glass throughout the night. The well where the alcohol goes got larger as the night progressed so $5.25 might have been a deal at 12:30am. We were fortunate to meet up with some really fun people in the bar...people who held the same belief we did that if we were drunk enough we'd just pass out and not have to worry about the cold. We closed the bar at 12:45am and after a group slide (I might have forgotten to mention that there is a slide made of ice inside the hotel . Very Cool!) we all went our seperate ways to prepare for bed. The ice slide was definetely a hugehighlight of the hotel. TONS of fun!
We get to Chamber 27 and our sleeping bags are waiting for us. We both took a deep breath and unrolled all of our bedding. It was like watching a sack race where everyone has had a bit too much to drink. We stripped off the boots and old socks, put our jackets underneath us and crawled in to the liner (while standing on the bed like kids) then zipped into the sleeping bags. Julia did a FANTASITC job of getting me snugged in because I feel alseep WAY sooner than she did. I slept on a off throughout the night tossing to find a comfortable position while being trapped in a cocoon. Of course, what I didn't want to happen, happened. I had to go to the bathroom. Lucikly, it was early morning, so it was light out. I unzipped my bag and quickly got my boots and fleece on a just ran to find the spa. After a few wrong turns, I had to find a map. I went into the spa to find a freakin note in FRENCH basically saying the bathrooms are out of order, so I had to go on to the OPPOSITE end of the hotel to use the heated port-o-lets by the Chapel. It was an adventure, but after making back to the room and stripping off my boots and jacket, I was back in my cocoon for a few more hours of sleep. We didn't think we needed a wake up call, but a guy came to the room at 8:30am to wake us up and we were both surprised we slept as late as we did. There was a serious "WE MADE IT" high five once we were dressed and headed for breakfast and coffee.
It was an amazing experience and I am SO glad we did it. You guys don't know what you missed!
We are dog sledding today at 1pm and it is overcast, windy, and really cold today (-1).
So yesterday's excursion didn't really go as planned. We did do a lot of walking around but we didn't go snowshoeing. Its hard to really have a plan when you're homeless. We had to check out of our room by noon and didn't have orientation for our night in the ice hotel until 5pm so basically had to keep moving or freeze in place. Julia had major sock issues throughout the day, so most of it was spent with her changing her socks and baking in front of the fireplace. We basically wasted the day but we were psyched for out 5pm mandatory orientation.
The girl leading our orientation, Stephanie, while extremely funny in her delivery of information, did not instill me with a whole lot of confidence. She sits down on this big box, smiles, takes the sleeping bag out of its bag and basically goes "this is your sleeping bag, theres a liner in your pillow so don't lose the pillow. When you get in for the night make sure to change your socks and put your old socks in your shoes. Any questions?" I'm thinking "yeah, how the hell am I going to zip thing up and make sure no cold air gets in." I honestly wasn't too worried about the overnight part, after all this is what we were here for so we were staying no matter what!
After orientation and an uneventful dinner, we came back to the ice hotel and went to the N'Ice bar for our complimentary drink. I had a Little Rudolph (vodka, midori, strawberry-kiwi juice) and Julia ordered something call Sea of Ice. Think Robatussin and you know what drink hers tasted like. Our drinks WERE served in glasses made of ice and the drinks were only $5.25 if you held on to your glass throughout the night. The well where the alcohol goes got larger as the night progressed so $5.25 might have been a deal at 12:30am. We were fortunate to meet up with some really fun people in the bar...people who held the same belief we did that if we were drunk enough we'd just pass out and not have to worry about the cold. We closed the bar at 12:45am and after a group slide (I might have forgotten to mention that there is a slide made of ice inside the hotel . Very Cool!) we all went our seperate ways to prepare for bed. The ice slide was definetely a hugehighlight of the hotel. TONS of fun!
We get to Chamber 27 and our sleeping bags are waiting for us. We both took a deep breath and unrolled all of our bedding. It was like watching a sack race where everyone has had a bit too much to drink. We stripped off the boots and old socks, put our jackets underneath us and crawled in to the liner (while standing on the bed like kids) then zipped into the sleeping bags. Julia did a FANTASITC job of getting me snugged in because I feel alseep WAY sooner than she did. I slept on a off throughout the night tossing to find a comfortable position while being trapped in a cocoon. Of course, what I didn't want to happen, happened. I had to go to the bathroom. Lucikly, it was early morning, so it was light out. I unzipped my bag and quickly got my boots and fleece on a just ran to find the spa. After a few wrong turns, I had to find a map. I went into the spa to find a freakin note in FRENCH basically saying the bathrooms are out of order, so I had to go on to the OPPOSITE end of the hotel to use the heated port-o-lets by the Chapel. It was an adventure, but after making back to the room and stripping off my boots and jacket, I was back in my cocoon for a few more hours of sleep. We didn't think we needed a wake up call, but a guy came to the room at 8:30am to wake us up and we were both surprised we slept as late as we did. There was a serious "WE MADE IT" high five once we were dressed and headed for breakfast and coffee.
It was an amazing experience and I am SO glad we did it. You guys don't know what you missed!
We are dog sledding today at 1pm and it is overcast, windy, and really cold today (-1).