Rebecca Engel
Quebec City doesn’t just put up with winter. It leans all the way into it. The old town is walled, French speaking and built out of stone, and once there’s snow on it the whole place looks like somebody dropped a piece of Europe into Canada and left it there.
It’s also the rare northern city where the cold is the point rather than the problem. There’s a toboggan run next to the big hotel, a hotel made of ice outside town, and a waterfall that freezes into a hill people climb. These are the best things to do in Quebec City in winter, starting inside the walls and working outward.
1. Ride The Toboggan Slide At Au 1884
There is a wooden toboggan run on the boardwalk beside the Chateau Frontenac, and it has been there since 1884.
Three lanes, about 250 metres, and you go down on a wooden sled with up to three other people. It gets moving faster than it looks from the top, somewhere around 70 kilometres an hour by the bottom.
It costs a few dollars a ride and takes about a minute, including the walk back up. Most people do it three or four times.
The view from the top of the slide is the classic one, out over the river with the hotel behind you. Ride it once after dark when the terrace lights are on.
2. Walk Quartier Petit Champlain Under The Lights
Petit Champlain is the oldest commercial street in North America and in winter it’s strung end to end with lights, with snow banked up against the shopfronts.
It’s a few narrow streets rather than a district, and it takes twenty minutes to walk unless you go into the shops, which you will. Local craftspeople, not chains.
The Escalier Casse Cou, which translates roughly as breakneck stairs, connects it to the upper town. There’s a funicular right beside it if the stairs are iced over.
Rue du Tresor nearby is the alley where local artists sell prints and it’s worth the two minutes it takes to walk through.
3. Sleep At The Hotel de Glace
A hotel built entirely out of ice and snow, rebuilt from scratch every winter about thirty minutes outside the city at Valcartier.
Every room is carved differently, the bar serves drinks in ice glasses, and there’s a chapel people genuinely get married in. It usually opens in early January and melts in March.
You can stay the night in an arctic sleeping bag on a bed of ice, which is a real experience and not a comfortable one. Most people do the day visit instead and go back to a warm hotel.
The same site has snow tubing and a big indoor water park, which is how families usually make a full day of it.
4. Shop The German Christmas Market
Quebec City runs a German Christmas market through the weeks before Christmas, spread across a few squares in the old town.
Wooden chalets, mulled wine, sausages, and a lot of the same things you’d find in Cologne, which is deliberate. The city has leaned into the German market format for years now and it fits the architecture better than it has any right to.
It’s compact enough to do in an evening and it lands right in the middle of the walkable part of town.
Go on a weeknight. Weekends bring in everyone from the surrounding region and the lanes between the chalets get tight.
5. Take Afternoon Tea At The Chateau Frontenac
The Chateau Frontenac is the green roofed hotel on the cliff that every photograph of this city has in it. It opened in 1893 and it’s often called the most photographed hotel in the world.
You don’t have to stay there to get inside. Afternoon tea runs in the lounge, the bar does a decent cocktail, and there are guided tours of the building.
Standing under it on Dufferin Terrace in the snow is free and honestly most of the payoff.
Book tea ahead in December and around Carnaval. It fills up with people doing exactly the same thing you are.
6. See Montmorency Falls Frozen Solid
Montmorency Falls is 83 metres high, which makes it taller than Niagara, and it’s fifteen minutes from downtown.
In winter the spray freezes at the base into a huge white cone the locals call the sugarloaf. People climb it. There’s ice climbing on the frozen edges of the falls and a via ferrata route across the cliff face.
A suspension bridge crosses right over the top and a long staircase runs down the side of the gorge, which is a workout in boots.
You can get there by bus or in a twenty minute drive, and it pairs naturally with a run out to Ile d’Orleans.
7. Meet Bonhomme At Carnaval de Quebec
Carnaval is the biggest winter carnival in the world and it takes over the city for about seventeen days in early February.
Bonhomme, a giant snowman in a red hat and a woven sash, is the mascot and effectively the mayor for the duration. There’s an ice palace, night parades, snow sculpture competitions and a canoe race across the half frozen river.
Book accommodation months ahead if your trip lands on it. Prices go up and the city fills.
If you’re coming outside those weeks, you’ll get a quieter city for less money, and most of this list runs all season anyway.
8. Snowshoe The Plains Of Abraham
The Plains of Abraham is the battlefield where the British took the city in 1759, and it’s now a big open park right beside the old town.
In winter it’s groomed for cross country skiing and snowshoeing, with rentals on site and trails that run along the cliff above the river.
There’s a skating loop and a tubing hill too, and the whole thing is a ten minute walk from the Chateau.
It’s where locals go to get outside on a Saturday, which makes it a good place to remember this is a real city and not a film set.
9. Thaw Out At Strom Nordic Spa
The Nordic spa idea is simple and it works. Hot bath, cold plunge, rest, repeat, all of it outdoors in the snow.
Strom sits by the river in Sillery, about fifteen minutes from the old town, with outdoor pools, saunas and a eucalyptus steam room. Siberia Station Spa up at Lac Beauport is the other good one and it’s more rustic.
It is the correct thing to do on the day your legs give out from walking on ice.
Book a slot in advance, bring a swimsuit, and know that most of these places keep the relaxation areas quiet by rule.
10. Roll Maple Taffy Off The Snow
Hot maple syrup gets poured in a line onto clean snow, left for a few seconds to set, then rolled up onto a wooden stick. That’s tire sur la neige and it’s the best thing you’ll eat outdoors all trip.
You’ll find it at Carnaval, at the Christmas market, and at sugar shacks outside the city. The shacks are more of a spring thing but several run winter meals.
It’s pure sugar and it takes about four seconds to eat. Have two.
The sugar shack meal that usually comes with it is pea soup, ham, beans, pancakes and more syrup, served at long tables with a fiddle going.
11. Order Tourtiere At Aux Anciens Canadiens
Aux Anciens Canadiens sits in a white house with a red roof that went up in 1675, which makes it the oldest house in the city.
The food is the old Quebecois canon. Tourtiere, which is a spiced meat pie, ham glazed in maple syrup, meatball stew, and blueberry pie to finish.
Ask for caribou, a hot mix of red wine and spirits that shows up all over the city in winter and tastes better than the description suggests.
It’s touristy and it’s still good. Lunch is much cheaper than dinner for close to the same menu.
12. Skate The Rink At Place D’Youville
There’s an outdoor rink just outside the Saint Jean gate, tucked against the old city wall, and it’s open from about October to March.
It’s small, it’s free to skate on, and there’s skate hire beside it. Music plays, the walls are lit, and it costs almost nothing.
This is the one locals actually use, so you’ll be sharing it with kids learning to skate and teenagers going too fast.
Go in the evening. The lighting on the old gate behind the rink is the whole reason to pick this one.
13. Take A Dog Sled Out Near Jacques Cartier
Outfitters north of the city run dog sledding through the forest, most of them out toward the Jacques Cartier valley and Duchesnay.
A half day usually means a briefing, time with the dogs, and a run where you drive the sled yourself with someone riding along. Nobody just sits in a basket unless they want to.
It’s cold work standing on the back of a sled, so this is the day for every layer you brought.
Most places will collect you from the city if you don’t have a car, which is worth asking about when you book.
14. Drink Ice Cider On Ile d’Orleans
Ile d’Orleans is a farming island in the river twenty minutes from downtown, and it’s where the city’s food comes from.
Ice cider is the thing to try. Apples are left to freeze, which concentrates the sugar, and the result is somewhere between a dessert wine and a cider. Several producers on the island pour tastings through the winter.
There’s also a chocolate shop, a blackcurrant farm that makes liqueur, and views back across the water to the frozen falls.
The loop road around the island takes about an hour to drive without stopping, and about four hours with.
15. Step Inside Notre Dame de Quebec
The basilica in the old town has been rebuilt twice after fire and the current interior is all gold leaf and painted ceiling, which is a shock after the plain stone outside.
It has a Holy Door, one of only a handful outside Europe, and a crypt underneath where several hundred people are buried including the founder of the city.
It’s free to walk into and warm, which by day two of a winter trip counts for a lot.
There’s often an evening light and sound show projected inside the building through the season, which is worth checking the schedule for.
What To Wear In Quebec City In Winter
It gets cold in a way that surprises people. January and February sit around minus twelve to minus fifteen most days and go lower at night, and the wind off the river makes it worse.
Boots with real grip matter more than anything else. The old town is built on a hill, the streets are cobbled, and they get icy. Layers, a proper coat, a hat that covers your ears and gloves you can actually use are the rest of it.
The upper and lower towns are joined by stairs and a funicular. Use the funicular when the stairs are iced, it costs a few dollars and it saves your ankles.
Most of the best things to do in Quebec City in winter happen outdoors, so build the day around one indoor thing in the middle. A long lunch, the basilica, the spa, or the museum on the Plains.
Final Thoughts
Three days is about right. One inside the walls, one out at the falls and the island, one for whatever the weather allows.
If the dates are flexible, February gets you Carnaval and the ice hotel at full tilt, and January gets you the same city for less money with nobody in it.
Bring the boots, book the spa for the day your legs give out, and ride the toboggan slide at least twice.
