Losing my wallet
10.02.2008
We stayed at a pretty crappy B&B last night, which had a very poor heating system, and holes in the windows... I slept on an air bed, which would've been OK, if only it wasn't freezing and I didn't periodically wake up shivering in the dark.
After a very nice breakfast and in the morning, we tried to make all kinds of reservations for things. The spa day, a fancy dinner at Laurie-Raphael and a rental car for an out trip to the mountains on Thursday.
After doing all that, we got our stuff together in order to traipse across town to the Manoir Victoria, a very nice place where we will be staying for the rest of the week. (We couldn't find a place for Saturday night, other than this one auberge in Lower Town).
I still had to pay for the room, so I go into my messenger bag to look for my wallet. I reach my hand in, swish it around, and when I pulled my hand out, my wallet wasn't there! I love that wallet! There's $200 in there! My credit and debit cards are in there! Ahhhhhhhhh... I don't know where it could've gone! Completely frustrated and flabberghasted, I turned the whole room upsidedown looking for it. To no avail...
Immediately, I call the credit card company and the bank, and then cancel all the cards I can think of. I think that maybe I dropped it on the bus last night, or else someone actually came into my room, while I was in the bathroom, which is located down the hall. So then, I automatically blame myself for being so irresponsible.
- sigh*
Anyway, I must get on with the trip, so I try and forget everything, which is very difficult. I can't imagine someone would just go rifling through my bag while I'm taking a crap. We catch the next bus to Vieux-Quebec, where our second hotel is.
It's absolutely beautiful. It's a very nice Christmas present from Expedia, my ultimate employer. The location is awesome, and there's a really nice sauna in the basement, so I can warm up after a long day of freezing with Bonhomme.
We went down to the canoe races at the marina. We stand around for an hour, only to see a few guys in metal "canoes" go paddling through the ice-blocked harbour. It's kind of boring, especially since we can only see each heat for about four seconds... So we go back up the hill for lunch, which was pretty good. At Bizou, $10 got us soup, pork parmesan???, pasta, and dessert.
After this, our room was ready, so we went and unpacked our stuff, put on some warmer clothes and headed out into the CRAZY blizzard, destination: the Plains of Abraham!
There are all kinds of beautiful snow sculptures there, but we couldn't really read the artists' statements, because they were exclusively in French. *sad*
The snow was incredibly soft and deep, it was just like walking through sand. Your feet constantly slip and slide beneath you, and there is a layer of ice underneath about a foot of snow.
There was also a huge ice castle. When you went inside, there was some basic information about Samuel de Champlain and the 400th anniversary of Quebec. There were also some really nice ice sculptures of musical instruments and the ubiquitous image of Bonhomme.
We noticed that the line for the "Tyrolienne" was short. It's a zip line which spanned the entire lenth of the fairgrounds, so I strapped on a harness and flew through the air from the top of a platform, and on the other side, crashed into a big blue crash mat on another platform. That was fun. Then, me and my mom went down the ice slide and looked at some more snow sculptures, (there seemed to be no end).
Personally, I think the ice sculptures at Ottawa's Winterlude are much better than the snow sculptures at Carnaval. Especially since you can appreciate them in any language. But, it could be because the snow sculptures had about 50 cm of snow accumulated on them, obscuring the details.
My mom was cold, so we went back to our hotel early, warmed up for a bit in the sauna and then went to bed.
Tomorrow, we will probably go museum hopping, or some such thing.
