Review of Casino de Charlevoix, Canada: A beautiful casino, scenic drive, and fantastic food truck!

 

Casino de Charlevoix, Canada (hotel)

One of my favorite things in the world is visiting new places, whether that’s a new city, a new park, a new restaurant, or a new hotel/motel/lodging.  There’s just something special, exciting, and anticipatory about going to a new place.

My heart races at the thought of finding a new place to explore.  As I’m researching a place, I get a kick out of reading various reviews of fellow travelers, as well as looking at photos of places to explore.  The anticipation builds after I actually book our lodging, wondering what the trip would be like…

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again:  There’s nothing quite like traveling to explore somewhere new.  My brain is tingling with the thought that I’ll be getting new stimuli, and the anticipation reaches a climax when we’re leaving for the trip that departure date.

My wife and I always loved exploring all sorts of places on a new trip.  It could be new restaurants, museums, parks, major & minor attractions as well as casinos.  Usually, if there is a casino that is near a new place we’re visiting, then we would probably stop by to check it out.

Just like a baseball aficionado who tries to visit as many baseball stadiums as possible, we try to do the same with casinos.  We’ve done that when we were visiting St. Louis, Montreal, Minneapolis, and New Orleans, and we did that during our trip to Quebec City in July.

Now don’t get me wrong.  We like to do all sorts of things during our trip, and not just visit a casino.  Our favorite kind of a trip is when we do a combination of sightseeing, walking/hiking, eating at new restaurants, then visit a casino towards the evening.  This allows us not to spend all day at a casino, which can be detrimental to our wallets!

We like to pace ourselves.  We also try to do more than just gamble, as soon as we get to a casino.  We like to walk around the place to get a feel for the place, eat at one of the restaurants, then settle down for some gambling.

We hate the feeling of losing all our money just gambling away mindlessly, without checking out anything else the casino has to offer.  One of the reasons we love Las Vegas casinos is that most of the famous ones usually have attractions we can spend some time in.  Whether that’s Bellagio’s beautiful water fountains, Caesars’ talking statues, or Circus Circus’s free circus acts, we simply love doing all kinds things…

Our decision to visit a new casino during our trip to Quebec City was an easy decision.  We had stopped over by Montmorency Falls and spent about 3 hours at the falls.  By the time we had checked in at our hotel, it was only around 4 p.m.

Instead of calling it a night by staying at or near the hotel, we decided to go and visit Casino de Charlevoix, as we didn’t know when our next trip to the city would be.  My motto when traveling is always this:  When you have the opportunity to do something, just do it.  Don’t overthink it, or hesitate.  Don’t miss the chance to do something now, as we may not get a second chance…

With that internal directive guiding us, we decided to head out to the casino, on a rainy day with heavy thunderstorms in the forecast.  We went outside our hotel to see that the weather forecast was absolutely correct. 

We headed out on a northeasterly direction, hugging the famous St. Lawrence River on our right. Traffic had been heavy at first, thanks to Thursday afternoon rush hour (and the heavy rain), but thinned out noticeably by the time we had passed the downtown area.

We marveled at all those road signs written in French as well as store signs written in the same language.  We absolutely loved that.  It added to the feeling of visiting another country, full of unknown and full of novelty.

As we passed the town of L’Ange-Gardien, we saw a magnificent double rainbow thanks to quick moving thunderstorm.  It was awesome!  We haven’t seen a rainbow or the more elusive double rainbow in a long time.  We hoped that was a good omen for our trip to the casino.

About an hour into our 2 1/2 hour drive, the road really opened up.  We saw wide open farmlands, distant vistas, and small towns.  After around another half an hour drive, we hit a cute, European style town square with pretty historic buildings, restaurants/cafes, and a street fair.  

The smells at the street fair were mesmerizing!  We really wanted to stop over to get some tasty local food, so we looked for parking.  We were not successful, however, even after driving around the town for about 15 minutes.  Oh well…

We headed back our way to the casino, leaving that street fair behind us.  We again hit open roads with the St. Lawrence River opening up like an ocean to our right.  Had we not known it was a river, we would’ve mistaken it for an ocean.  It was that wide and gigantic…

After another hour of going up many hills then down many hills, while sometimes taking ‘S’ curves, we finally made it to the casino.  The drive had been epic!  Had the weather cooperated with us, we would’ve seen even more impressive scenery of the river, but we were grateful anyway.  It’s not often we get to drive along St. Lawrence River, feeling like James Bond (well, without his Aston Martin, but rather a Chevy) on our way to a casino for the evening.  

By that time, around 6:30 p.m., we were really getting hungry, as all we had for lunch that day was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and some fruits.  We were famished!

We were debating what to eat prior to us leaving for the casino, and had tentatively planned to eat at one of the restaurants at the casino.  There were two options, one of which was an upscale restaurant with prices ranging around $40-$50 (CAD), while the other was a casual restaurant with less expensive options at around $20-$30 (CAD) range.  

Mulling our choices for dinner as we walked over to the casino, we saw what looked to be a food truck.  We were right!  Food truck was Belles & Bum, and we decided right then and there that that was the way to go.  

We were looking at the menu when the friendly owner asked us if we wanted to see an English language menu, as the menu was in French.  We were so glad!  We ended up ordering a Buffalo style cauliflower, French fries, and a chicken sandwich.  Everything was so tasty.  We gulped them all down in no time, feeling completely satisfied.

Belles & Bum food truck

Had dinner under this tent

For a total of around $25 (USD), we felt like we got a great deal.  Food was exceptional, tasty, and unique.  There’s something about the spice(s) they use that was rather new to us.  It smelled like some kind of a herb, like maybe a coriander or curry(?), and it really added to the food.  

After finish eating, we looked for a garbage can and recycling bin, and found one across from the food truck.  We got a kick out of French again!

We walked towards the casino after throwing away our garbage, then decided to walk the beautifully manicured gardens and the walkways.  Casino itself is not big, but the hotel across the street from the casino is.

The casino

We started to walk towards the river, loving the beautiful views and the manicured grounds.  Along the way, we saw an automatic grass cutting robot made by Huskvarna, which was something we had never seen in the USA.  We stopped to check out the robot going about its business of going to and fro, and cutting grass.  It was kind of cute.

Beautiful walkways, Casino de Charlevoix 

St. Lawrence River 

Grass cutting robot!

We completed our loop of the hotel area, stopping frequently to enjoy the views and the ambiance.  The casino is definitely unique as it has an European feel to the place, almost reminding me of many famous casinos featured in James Bond movies, like the Monte Carlo Casino.  

We meandered for about 20 minutes before heading inside to try our luck at the casino in another country! We stopped at the cashier and to our relief, one of the cashiers spoke English.  We changed our USD $160 and got back $203.75 (CAD).  We felt like we just won free money!  Thank you for the current currency exchange rate!

After getting our Canadian dollars in our hands, everything just about went all downhill.  Seeing the good luck charm of double rainbow on our way there didn’t help us in our endeavor to win some money.  We barely got to play an hour.  We burnt through our money so fast, we thought someone robbed us blind…Well, you can’t always win…

We briefly thought about playing longer, but decided against it, as we felt the slot machines were really being stingy.  We didn’t see anyone hitting anything of note, so we got up, and back to our car for the drive back to our hotel in Quebec City.

The drive back was epic, but not in a good way.  We hit heavy thunderstorms along the way, at times, blinding us even with the wipers going at full speed.  Luckily, we had a car going ahead of us, which kept going the same way for almost the entirety of the heavy thunderstorm.

We drove right behind that car, which served as a guide.  We felt our car hydroplaning on several occasions, so I let up on the accelerator to let the car catch its footing with the heavily drenched pavement.  My wife, who may doze off at times, couldn’t, as the drive was hairy, to say the least.  At least I had company all the way back to our hotel.

After driving about 3 hours, we had finally made it to our hotel in one piece.  We were ok, and so was our car.   We were so relieved and thankful that we made it back.  It was a spur of the moment trip idea that had all kinds of stimuli:  epic drives, excellent food, beautiful hotel/casino grounds, and driving through a scary thunderstorm.

Wow, what a trip at that…

In conclusion:

Our second trip to Quebec City area resulted in us wanting to explore more than just the downtown area.  To that end, we are glad we got to experience Casino de Charlevoix despite the scary drive back, through heavy thunderstorms.

If we choose to always play it safe, or wait for the perfect time to visit a place (or travel for that matter), we may never actually do anything.  I always believed our life is finite, and that we should take every opportunity to do things, as we may not get another chance.

In traveling, it is even more true.  It took us 20 long years to revisit Quebec City, and who knows when our next trip might be?  

Traveling (and getting new stimuli) is one of the best things in life.  Life would be so devoid of fun and adventure, were it not for new stimuli you experience along your travels…

Thank you all for reading and happy trails!

Jake

Wandering Money Pig 

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