Where has the time gone? It feels as though we just pulled up to the Belvedere at Sô Lodges – but that’s testament to how easy this holiday has been.
The drive to Bromont? Short and straightforward, without much back-road driving.
The heavy rain storm that swept across Quebec? A complete non-issue. Bromont was open the next morning, and conditions were perfectly fine.
Settling into the Belvedere? The rental was extremely well stocked, and everything was clearly explained in the e-mail from Sô Lodges. Plus there’s a high-quality, reasonably-priced IGA grocery store minutes down the road. And a Metro one block over.
Accessing the hill, and picking up our tickets? It took a few minutes to find our way around, but getting the tickets was as simple as scanning a bar code at one of the many automated kiosks. No line for lifts, and plenty of trail maps to be found. Also fantastic on-hill guides who could be found by most maps to answer questions on how to get from lift to lift.
Eating on the hill? The restaurants had good food at reasonable prices with short waits. That’s the trifecta, and so very rarely found on any kind of sizeable ski hill.
A heavy windstorm? Not an issue – the Mont Soleil lift continued to operate, and they were able to open the rest of the hill by early afternoon.
And so on, and so forth. This trip passed quickly because it was easy.
We even managed to pack up without major incident. Thinking ahead, I had loaded our roof box the day before and otherwise it was simply a matter of stuffing our dirty laundry bags into our duffles and then loading them in the back of the vehicle.
Sô Lodges does ask that you take out the garbage and run the dishwasher before you leave, but that’s the extent of it – no need to hide a key beneath the third tree gone widdershins or perform a purification rite on the sauna or anything like that.
And would we return again? Well, Sô Lodges is currently running a pay-five, stay-seven deal for next year so we’ve asked whether they offer any kind of extra discount for returning guests. We’ll see how that goes.
(This same request bit us in the rear end during our Sir Sam’s visit, as the mere act of asking for a discount caused the last property’s owner to raise his rates and then offer a discount for cash-only bookings. Have I mentioned yet that he also asked us to bring our own blankets? That should have been warning enough.)
Ah, well. If that hadn’t happened, we might never have ended up in Bromont – and Bromont’s a lovely place to end up.
We piled into the car for the drive home – after first e-mailing the management company, just in case they wanted to send their cleaner in early – and made the trek back to Ontario.
A true-to-life representation of how the road starts to look on the third hour spent staring down a 400-series highway
The roads weren’t particularly busy, though there was a steady stream of snow that turned to rain as the road wore on.
Likewise, the landscape started off white-ish:
But soon faded to brown as we neared home:
No white Christmas for us this year – but our time in Bromont will certainly help make up for that.
Only a few short weeks now remain until we depart for our next three-month-long trip that will take us from Tasmania to Tokyo. Hoping to get one more post up before we leave – likely an in-depth review of our time at Explora Atacama.
In the mean time, from our family to yours – we hope you enjoy this holiday season and thank you so much for joining us!