I have a deep affinity for off-season ski resorts.
The first one my wife and I visited was in Utah. We unintentially arrived in time for Oktoberfest. We drove deep into the mountains in an anemic Dodge Calibre that we nicknamed “Grandpa”. We paid two dollars to join a private club so that we could have a glass of wine with dinner. (It was Utah, after all.)
We bought bottles of Dos Equis only to find that it was “guaranteed not to contain more than 3% alcohol,” so we took it in lieu of water when we went hiking. I rode a mechanical bull, and was almost banned from the concrete luge for insufficient braking.
It was a great week.
Since then, all of our visits to ski resorts have been during the winter. Sometimes with solid success, and occasionally to great disappointment – but our previous trip to Club Med Charlevoix was one of the best on record, despite the terrible weather. Beyond some excellent days of skiing and snowboarding, our son was positively enthralled with Passworld (teens’ club) and our daughter absolutely loved the aerial circus lessons.
It was so good, in fact, that we immediately booked another trip there – this time in the off-season. We were lured in by visions of the the St. Lawrence River in summer, hiking trails that spiderwebbed through the highlands, and mountain biking runs that thundered down toward the waiting river.
And that’s how we found ourselves – a mere 6 weeks after our last three-month-long Antarctica to Zimbabwe sojourn (link) – packing up for a trip to Charlevoix, Quebec.
A week-long trip? That sounds like a problem that can only be solved with 4 duffle bags, 4 backpacks, a carry-on bag of toiletries and a bin full of shoes
And – just because we are true suckers for punishment – we’re even taking our electric car this time around. Long-time readers might remember that this is the same vehicle that left us stranded at Great Wolf Lodge moons ago. And this trip is twice as long.
With all the packing and prep mostly in order, we woke at 6ish this morning – though I enjoyed a brief sleep-in, thanks to Fathers’ Day kindliness – to finish the last of the usual day-of tasks.
Clean out the fridge? Check.
Take out the garbage? Check.
Say goodbye to our ancient cat in case she dies while we’re away? Lone tear. Check.
And just like that, we were off – pulling out of the driveway at 7:30 am, a mere 90 minutes after the first stirrings of life in our lovely home.
A boding type of weather – what it bodes exactly, we’ll just have to see
We had a bad string of luck with our last electric car roadtrip, ending up at one charger that didn’t really work with our vehicle and then another with a line-up. It could’ve been worse, but it still added almost an hour to our trip – which is an hour too long when you’ve got kids in the car.
This would be a two-charger roadtrip, the longest we’ve done to date. So I vowed to be more meticulous, and so I had primary and back-up chargers for both of our planned stops.
And… it worked. We kept watchful eyes on the Electrify Canada app while driving and were able to see whether any of the chargers filled up. Neither did, so we were able to go with our top choices each time.
First stop – We added 48.5 kWh, taking us from a 28% charge to over 80%. Total charge time 23 minutes – enough time for a bio-break and a quick snack.
Second stop – We pumped in another 52.7 kWh, again taking us from roughly 25% to over 80%. Total charge time 26 minutes – time enough for another bio-break and to eat my McNuggets with dipping sauce. A rare treat, indeed.
Total cost? Perhaps an extra 20 minutes of our time, at most.
Savings? More than $200 in gasoline alone. (Electrify Canada is free for 3 years for First Gen Taycan owners.)
And the verdict? I wish I could tell you that electric cars are every bit as easy to use as their gasoline counterparts, but the sad reality is that we in Canada have a long way to go before that will be the case. We simply need more chargers in more locations.
But – this is perhaps the first time that the roadtripping experience has been almost as easy as a gasoline car. And given that the day-to-day electric car experience is vastly better than the day-to-day gasoline experience – charge overnight at your house, your vehicle doesn’t smell like gas or shake when you start it, and so on – this is a big step forward.
But I digress from our trip – we were in the car for the better part of a day…
… Until we finally arrived at the Club Med Charlevoix.
Traffic was generally good, apart from a few slowdowns near Montreal and Quebec City. Nothing unexpected.
Having been here before, we knew that we could pull up in front and safely unload. We also knew where the door-open buttons could be found, and the benefit of sending one of us to the front desk to check in while the other handled the bags.
My wife had suggested that I check to see if they had any upgrades available. And they did! It would cost an extra $572 tax included to move from their most basic interconnected superior rooms to one of the suites (part of their ‘Exclusive Space’).
For this, we would trade our two interconnecting rooms for a single two-bedroom suite with a balcony, waterfront view and living room. There are also myriad other perks including in-room continental breakfast, access to the 8th floor Lounge, the Exclusive Space concierge, and scheduled room cleaning. (There may be more, but those are the ones that jump out at us.)
They also threw in underground parking for added measure, which was handy as we needed to charge our car. While hotel charging is generally easy – so long as there are enough chargers available – this one proved more difficult. It requires access to the Flo app, but unfortunately there’s no wifi or cell signal in the parking garage so I had to dash back and forth from the lobby to the parking garage while I tried to initiate the session.
Ultimately I shifted one space over, which happened to be the only no-cost charger in the parking garage. Which is nice because they want between $5 to $8 per hour to charge the vehicle. Hopefully they’re faster than the free charger, which delivered a whopping 2.8 kW charging rate. So it would have taken roughly 20 hours and cost $90 to charge. But my session was free, so I won’t complain.
Back inside, where we waited briefly at the Exclusive reception before being taken up to the Exclusive lounge for a welcome drink:
While our original room was ready early, our newly-purchased suite needed a bit more attention before it could be turned over. So we had a few minutes to check out the beautiful Lounge:
And enjoy afternoon tea:
There’s even a pair of Exclusive hot tubs:
With this being our second stay, we are now Silver members which means that we qualify for early booking, free premium internet, and receive a $75 resort credit.
We finished our welcome drinks, and our suite was ready soon after. It’s a definite step up from the regular rooms:
The suites cost more than half-again as much as a regular room, however – we paid CAD$6,000 while the suite would be closer to CAD$10,000. I’m not sure it’s worth it to us as a stand-alone purchase but it made plenty of sense as an upgrade.
At this point we were riding high – all we had to do was go register the kids for Mini-Club (kids club) and Passworld (teens club), and we would be all set.
This, unfortunately, is where the plan began to unravel.
We swung by Passworld to find it locked up. Up to the Lounge to speak with our concierge, who informed us that it was closed due to lack of staffing. Well, technically they said it was because there weren’t enough teens to use it – but we counted at least 20 teenagers around. We pressed, and it became clear that this was more of a staffing issue than one of headcount.
Our son was – understandably – very disappointed. Passworld was far and away the highlight of his last trip. The concierge did say that we should show up at the Mini-club at 8:30 am tomorrow, so we’re hoping that they will be able to make some sort of arrangement – even the occasional teen-focussed activity would be appreciated.
Ah, well. Maybe the kids will enjoy mountain biking more, instead?
We asked the concierge how to book mountain biking – only to be informed that mountain biking won’t start until the day after we leave.
This is particularly frustrating as we have our own mountain bikes and could have brought them if they’d told us. But they didn’t – so here we are.
Ah, time for aerial circus lessons. Surely our daughter will enjoy that, at least.
Not so much – it’s a younger crowd this time around, and she didn’t particularly like the initial lesson. Maybe she’s aged out? Maybe a different lesson will go down better once we’ve all had the chance to get some rest? Hard to say.
Regardless, not a great start to the trip.
Dinner time. Club Med’s main restaurant is a high-end buffet, and we were soon able to grab a delicious assortment of pasta, pizza, grilled meat and tourtiere (a traditional Quebecois meat pie).
The first course of many
We soon remembered that it pays to pick a seat at the edges of the restaurant, as you tend to be further from the concentrations of high chairs (and the loud small children that tend to go in them).
Tired as we were from the road trip, the kids really enjoyed their meal – and the ice cream for dessert.
After we went exploring to see what other amenities we could find. Club Med Charlevoix also has a mini-golf course, though we knew from the online reviews that it was sad and tired, to put it kindly.
The reviews were accurate:
This hole in particular looks like the punchline to a joke about the Soviet Union:
In Soviet Russia, golf plays you
But – the kids had fun, and it passed the time between dinner and the evening Pirate Show:
Of all the shows in the world, this is definitely one of them. I’m glad that it evolved beyond the initial scene, which mainly involved the G.Os (Gentle Organizers, in Club Med parliance) whacking at each other with plastic swords. There was a plot, though it felt like something out of a fever dream:
A bunch of pirates catch a lobster with a map, and follow it to a fairy land with hidden treasure. The pirates steal the treasure – and one of their fellow pirates’ wigs – before the fairies notice their treasure is gone and fight the pirates. Eventually the pirates and the fairies make peace, and it turns out the treasure chest was full of old shoes. There’s probably more to it but that’s what stuck after 60 minutes of ribbon dancing and swordplay.
But – the kids loved it, and the dancing was pretty good. So who are we to argue with success?
It was getting late then, so we sat out on the balcony for one last drink and to break out the fresly-cleaned Nikon Z7ii to capture the view:
And then it was time for bed – for a leisurely wake-up before our first fair-weather hike up into the Charlevoix mountains.
Continue reading Club Med Charlevoix in Summer – Day 2.