Quebec City (conclusion)
Night at the Ice Hotel
We had lunch at Cafe Buade where I had pizza again and Traci tried the three-course lunch special. The entree was General Tso's chicken but with a Quebecois twist. It had a maple glaze which was delicious.
Cafe Buade - General Tso's chicken with maple glaze
The Café Au Bonnet d'Âne (The Dunce Cap Cafe or The Donkey's Hat Cafe) was also a dinner suggestion from the concierge at our hotel. Its menu used a school theme with sections like Geography, Biology, etc.. Traci finally had pizza and what an exotic pizza it was. It contained sliced apples among other ingredients. As for me, I had almond-crusted halibut.
Café Au Bonnet d'Âne - pizza with sliced apples
Café Au Bonnet d'Âne - almond-crusted halibut
As mentioned earlier, we had dinner and breakfast at Le Cochon Dingue. For dinner, Traci and I shared a full rack of maple-smoked baby back ribs with potato skins. For dessert we enjoyed the maple sugar cake with thick vanilla cream. The breakfast was filling and scrumptious. I especially enjoyed the hot chocolate with 64% Belgian chocolate.
maple-smoked baby back ribs with potato skins
maple sugar cake with thick vanilla cream
breakfast
breakfast
Our final dinner was at Aux Anciens Canadiens. We arrived at 5:30 and was able to take advantage of the 3-course early bird special. If we had arrived after 6 PM, everything would have been a la carte and potentially more expensive. Our meal was excellent. I stepped out a little and tried the Lac St-Jean meat pie. This was a hearty meat and potatoes dish that included wild game such as bison, caribou, and elk. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Traci had the Neptune’s shell that contained shrimp and scallops in white wine sauce and au gratin. It was excellent as well. For dessert, we went with the maple syrup pie - slammin'.
Lac St-Jean meat pie
Neptune’s shell
maple syrup pie
The Unhappy Ending
Our Quebec vacation was a great one until our trip home. It seems we got caught up in the miscommunication between United and Continental Airlines. The two airlines were in the process of merging at the time.
Our flight itinerary was the reverse of the one we had for our arrival in Quebec. We flew from Quebec City to Newark where we were to change planes and continue home to Dulles. All was good until we arrived in Newark. Because we arrived on an international flight, we had to retrieve our checked luggage, go through customs, re-check our luggage, and then go through security. After making it through that process, we looked on the screen to find out from which gate our flight to Dulles was departing but the gate number was blank. We asked one of the agents to look up the gate for us and we were told to take the shuttle bus to Terminal A. We got to Terminal A but our flight was still listed as blank. We asked another agent who told us we needed to take a different shuttle bus to "the other Terminal A". Huh?
With our departure time quickly approaching, the agent got on the phone and had the shuttle bus return to pick us up. We arrived at "the other Terminal A" only to find out we missed our flight. We were sent out of the terminal to the ticket counter where we were booked on a later flight. It turns out we were not the only ones who got mixed up in this frustrating process.
The lady at the counter handed us our tickets, told us our gate number, and told us we needed to take the airport train back to Terminal C where we arrived from Canada. We got to terminal and stood in the security line again. The TSA officer looked at our tickets, called his supervisor, and told us we cannot go through the security with the tickets we were given. Ugh! They told us to go to the United/Continental counter in Terminal C and have them print our boarding passes. The only thing that kept us sane at this point is that they told us we did not have to wait in the long security line again. We could just come to the front when we got our boarding passes.
We got our boarding passes and went through security. Some of the TSA personnel recognized us from the first time we went through the line two hours ago. They asked, "You two are still here?" to which we replied, "It's a long story."
We arrived back at Dulles Airport three hours later than we had planned. Our luggage was waiting for us in front of the United Airlines office. Traci wrote an email to United the next day explaining our frustrating ordeal. They responded the following week with $100 credit for each of us on our next United flight. Main Page...
Magnet Purchased on this Trip: (click to enlarge)
Entire fridge magnet collection...
Night at the Ice Hotel
