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Published: January 6th 2011
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(written in Jan 2011 but looking back at the summer)
During our first couple of weeks here in Quebec, we visited two things that I highly recommend families take in if they are in Quebec in the summer.
The first was the Val Cartier Vacation Village water park. It is about a half hour NW of Quebec City. This place is amazing! Something like 34 water slides. I took the boys alone, which was a challenge as M was not up to the same level of adventure as P, but even with this we had an awesome time. We will definietly be back (with 2 adults) once the weather warms up this year. As well as regular water slides, there is a huge pirate spalsh park area - definitely P's favorite. A little kids farm splash area - perfect for M, and other splash areas. Both boys loved the tube rides. Those worked well because on the ride though the medevial castle all three of us could go in the same double tube and in the Amazon river ride M & I were in one and P in the other but I could hold on to his tube too. I
Val Cartier Pirate area 2
side view of the pirate ship. the giant pirate legs coming out from the ship are slides! wish I had been able to take more pictures. A really great part of the park for parents is that they have tons of picnic tables for you to bring your own food. That will certainly help us out next time as food line ups were tough with young hungry boys. In the winter the place transforms to a giant sledding and skating park so we can't wait to go once we get fresh snow again!
The second great thing in August was the Ballon Festival (Festival Montgolfier) in St Jean sur Richelieu, about an hour from Montreal. Definitely high on the "Wow!" factor. The crowds to get in were huge, but it was set up well. In the kids area there were probably 40 giant inflatable bounce houses and slides - basically as far as you could see. The boys (and we) were in awe. There were shark and crocodile slides, roman coliseums, football arenas, dinosaur parks, pretty much any theme you can imagine they had as an inflatable. Everything was free with your admission, which in itself was also not too much, so a very good value. Generally the line ups for the bouncies went pretty fast
Val Cartier Splash park
another section of the splash park area. which is good with young kids on a very hot and humid day. I think the favorite was the shark slide where they crawled up and slid down through the shark's tail and out his jaws! Around supper time was the balloon lift. This is where all the hot air balloons gather in the fields around the festival and inflate their balloons and then lift off and drift to another designated spot. We were able to find a spot to sit right in the middle of the different fields, so we literally had balloons lifting off all around us. It was amazing. As well as the beautiful colored regular balloons, there were also many special shaped balloons. Unfotunately it was a bit too windy our day for many of these to lift off, but they did inflate so people could get a look at them. It was an event I would highly recommend visiting. Apparantly there is also a similar event Sept long weekend in the Ottawa area.
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