Hôtel de Glace
Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier, Quebec, Canada
Hôtel de Glace is North America's only ice hotel, and it is built from scratch each winter at Valcartier, north of Quebec City. Crews begin in late autumn, spraying snow over steel forms, carving the vaults and cutting ice blocks; the building opens around the turn of the year and is gone by spring.
Rooms and suites are sculpted individually, so the layout and the carvings change with each season's theme. Beds are wooden platforms on ice bases, topped with a mattress and an arctic-rated sleeping bag. The interior holds around minus three to minus five Celsius regardless of the weather outside, which is warmer than most guests expect.
The hotel also contains an ice bar, a slide, and a chapel that hosts a steady run of winter weddings. Heated facilities, a Nordic spa and conventional accommodation sit beside it on the same site — the standard advice is to spend the evening in the ice and keep a warm room as a fallback, and nobody at the front desk treats that as a failure.