A Magical Realist: More Canadian Adventures!

Ok. I'm going to continue with Monday's Canadian adventures. When we left off, I'd given you a tour of my lovely vacation rental. After I took those photos I decided to visit Mont-Tremblant - a lovely little town (and national park) in the Laurentian mountains. It got it's name from the Algonquins who called it the "trembling mountain" (mont = mountain; trembling = trembling). It's best known for its ski resort and its race track.

So basically, in the winter Mont-Tremblant is probably most relevant to people who like to ski or snowboard. I do neither. I've snowboarded exactly once, when I was much younger and much stupider. Long story short, I was on a date and attempting to be impressive. I'd never snowboarded before but I'd skateboarded so I figured my skills would transfer. Nope. I went flying most impressively over a jump but I didn't land it. Instead I managed to discover an iced-over pond with my face, breaking my nose and my dignity in the process. I then had to slither back to land on my stomach inch by inch to avoid cracking the ice and drowning myself in freezing cold pond water. The snore that began with my broken nose is still with me today as a souvenir of my own stupidity.

Anyway. Back to my trip. I started out by wandering about the village. Here we go. The first thing I saw was this gorgeous church:

Pretty church.

Seriously isn't this pretty?!

Next to the church was this weird tree sculpture.

Me in front of weird tree sculpture.

Actually, they really like their weird tree sculptures here…

Another weird tree sculpture in metal.

Me in front of a neat little birch Christmas tree.

They also like evergreen decorations.

Me in a gazebo of with evergreen boughs.

Across the street and down the road a bit I found a mural near an antipasto stop.

Mural.

But when I stopped to look at the mural, I noticed something even cooler! An ice sculpture of a train that you can actually go inside! This is also the first time I used my new Christmas present selfie stick.

Really cool ice train.

Another picture of the really cool ice train.

Me in the ice train.

Me in the train from the front.

I wandered about some more, noticing the cute carvings on the porches and tops of many buildings.

Blue house with white trimming that is pretty.

Eventually I wandered over to some friendly people who told me how to find the top of the mountain with a free ski lift so I could get an aerial view of everything. So I went back to my car. On the way I found a mural of the founding family. Erm… By which they obviously mean the first white people who moved here since the area was already settled. Ugh. Racism.

First white family in the area.

Moving on. I found another ice sculpture! This one is a seal.

Seal Ice Sculpture.

Me kissing the seal ice sculpture.

So I hopped back in my car and drove most of the way up the mountain, parked in the free parking lot, walked the rest of the way up, and looked around. The ski resort is basically its own tiny town. It was pretty cute. I particularly enjoyed the tiny ice slide.

Pretty buildings.

Me in front of a street.

Random alleyway.

Tiny ice slide that was fun to use!

Chair made out of skis!

Random courtyard with menorah.

I was pleasantly surprised to find an inuksuk in the area. I learned about them a few years ago from a woman from Nunavik who was in Montréal for school. At the time I'd assumed we'd never see each other again but now that I'm considering a move to Canada I wish that we'd thought to swap contact information so I could get back in touch with her. Oh well.

Inuksuk.

After wandering about for a bit, I rode the lift up, checked out the skiing area, and rode the lift back down again:

Me looking confident before going on the lift.
Have I mentioned I'm scared of heights?

View from the lift is gorgeous.

View from the lift again.

Lift view.

Me on the lift trying not to look nervous.

See my shadow on the roof?

Snowy rooftops.

Sunset beginning and rooftops.

Me on the lift finally relaxing a bit because I'm still alive.

Sunset in between the trees.

Sunset starting.

Sun setting on the side.

Sun is setting.

Phew. I made it. Once I got off the lift, I decided to reward my bravery with something I'd never tried before. Tire-d'érable. It's delicious. All you do is take heated up maple syrup and pour it over clean snow in a line. Put a stick in it, wait a little under a minute so it hardens a bit to the texture of taffy, and roll it up. I'm totally trying this next time it snows back home. Assuming I can find clean snow in the city, that is.

Me waiting.

Rolling it up.

Ready to eat.

Yum!

Yup. Good stuff.

The last interesting thing that happened to me on Monday is that I took an accidental detour near the national park on my way back and I saw a deer in the parking lot where I pulled in to make a U-turn.