Perfect for that long weekend in Quebec City
by A TripAdvisor Member
The Hotel St. Anne is a fantastic place to stay when staying in a fantastic place as Quebec City. If you live in the northeast area and have yet to visit; it is highly recommended, particularly if you’ve got a long weekend coming up. The Hotel St. Anne certainly lived up to all the A1 reviews I read on TripAdvisor prior to my booking 3 nights there.
It is situated ideally on a pedestrian street (no cars allowed) and is rife with charm that gives Quebec its personality. Literally, in just 20 to 30 steps in any direction you can either get a portrait done by one of the many portrait artists that line the Rue St. Anne, have a cocktail at an outdoor café, get to the central Tourist Office, people-watch at the nearby park & fountain, peruse vender kiosks, or admire the Frontenac’s pretty façade as you linger in its shadow.
When we first arrived we needed to check-in and get a parking card via the hotel. Parking accommodation via the hotel allows you to pay a mere $10 a day in the municipal parking garage (again, just right around the corner, below City Hall on the corner of St. Anne and Desjardins). Get that parking card first; then park - if you are driving or have a car. It can be a bit chaotic when arriving at the time when the whole world is out and starting their evening and you have to idle by a traffic-thru street to run in.
HOTEL STAFF: AWESOME in every way! Every question and concern was addressed with a friendly and informed response and I had to pester them with quite a few! Extremely warm and welcoming. A pretty blonde seemed to go out of her way to make our stay the best. A woman in the evening answered all of my “Direction” questions with efficiency and helped us a few times when we needed someone to speak French for us when calling places for reservations and information. The concierge is available from 7am-midnight.
ROOM: I booked through Expedia and got a great deal for Mid-July. I wasn’t given the option of choosing a “room with a view” which was important to me so I just hoped for the best when arriving there. We were originally given a room on the 3rd floor that- unfortunately had no view of the street and because the hotel was booked that evening completely, I could not upgrade. Asking again the following day however, brought us some good luck and we were able to get a room with a view on the 2nd, without paying additional cost! (Inside secret: only about 2 “standard rooms” have views – so in our case, we were VERY lucky to get it for the following 2 nights, otherwise – DO upgrade for an additional $20 to get a “superior room”, which is both bigger and much more pleasing to the eye. These rooms have exposed brick walls and most will have a street view.) Getting that other room made such a big difference in our disposition as they have great big windows, nearly from ceiling to low bottom and the room fills up with a nice light and life that your just not getting in that budget, back-of-the-building room. But like I said, if it’s not that important to you and you want to save a little more, you’ll still be pleased.
The rooms, both standard and superior – are clean, comfortable and modern. Beds are pretty comfortable and all is sleek in white, dark and light. The beds are cool, with built0in lights on the headboard and the bathrooms are cool with showers that have a see-through glass wall and sink you might want to rip out of the wall and take home with you. Simple European-Ikea type décor. A great set-up for accommodations that have “the best” location in my opinion and have rates on par or even cheaper than a Holiday Inn or Best Western without the tackiness or dated feel (e.g. floral bedcovers, aqua-blue carpeting, etc ). Windows in those front rooms are large and allow light to stream through and flood the room, which is nice. This is no deluxe-luxury hotel, so don’t expect pedicures, a swimming pool or caviar – but a nice down-to-earth, casual-sophisticated environment. You can have a great Latte in the morning, or sparkling martini at the bar. This is a place for a fun-weekend with friends or with your special someone when you just want to chill. There are 28 rooms in total on 4 floors, and all have been recently renovated in 2004 but the hotel has kept true to the buildings antique details. Choose from standard, superior, budget or junior suite. This is a completely non-smoking facility. There are basic amenities included: TV with cable, alarm radio, room service, laundry, internet availability.
RESTAURANT: “Le Grille” is sufficient and both popular with people staying there and others. Evenings are jovial. Food is standard, predominantly Italian. This terrace restaurant is a great place to spend a few hours over appetizers and a bottle of wine outside. Music and entertainment is constant. There was someone different every night in front of this hotel. If you get a standard room, it includes a FREE continental breakfast: breads, juice, coffee, fruit, yogurt. If you decide to eat breakfast off the menu (I had a satisfying, Canadian Eggs Benedict, mmm..) each person staying there gets a $7.00 voucher, so if 2 people eat a breakfast totaling $20.00, you only pay $6.00. Open from 7am-11pm.
The following is a list of “FYI’s”:
1.) Do not get THIS hotel [Hotel Sainte Anne] confused with Hotel Jardin Sainte Anne. Very separate, very different hotels. They are both on the same street.
2.) Tourist center is literally 50 meters away, like 25 steps. This is extremely convenient when wanting to exchange money, book excursions, and get info.
3.) Another 25 steps from the tourist center and you have access to the Furnicular, which transports people between upper and lower towns [This hotel is located in upper-town]. And then 10 steps from that is Dufferin Terrace in front of the Frontenac (See my review on TripAdvisor about my one night at the Frontenac).
4.) Bottom Line: Suggested for small families, outings with friends, young couples, care-free weekenders looking for clean, sleek, casual accommodations in a central locale without having to pay an arm & a leg.
If you want to be surrounded by real historic ambiance - like antiques or real french decor, or constant pampering, or want extra large rooms - do look elsewhere.
Unpleasant Experience
by A TripAdvisor Member
Unpleasant Experience
The drastic slant of the padded ceiling left only 1/3 of the small room accessable while standing. Extremely narrow windows flanking this ceiling could not lighten the dark interior, despite the brightness of the day. At night, turning on the bathroom light flooded the sleeping area with light through a large and impractical glass panel. When we complained of all this in the morning we were shown a non-attic room which was equally small and gloomy, as the window opened onto an interior cement cubicle. We asked that the remaining two of our three nights reservation be cancelled, and were told we would be charged for them because they have a 48 hour cancellation policy. After wasting an entire morning arguing with the owner, we left and are contesting the charge of one extra night. We have never in our travels encountered any hotel so determined to keep dissatisfied customers captive.
Contemporary amidst the old
by A TripAdvisor Member
A chic modern hotel in the middle of Rue Ste Anne - a fairly touristy pedestrian street in the heart of Vieux Quebec and a stones throw to the stairs down the la basse ville. The exterior is old, the interior modern, and the terrasse a great place for breakfast. The staff are friendly and helpful. The only disadvantage is parking is a block away in a parkade without an elevator to the surface. So unload your luggage and then park.
Somewhat Disappointed
by TripAdvisor Member TMCUSER1
First time trip to Quebec with wife for a three night stay coming in from Connecticut which we were looking forward to for months. We found the city to be small and romantic albeit ultra-touristy (t-shirt shops abound). While you might think that the hotel location is unbeatable in the center of upper-city literally a couple of steps from the Frontenac, the city is so small that it really doesn't matter where the hotel is as you can pretty much take a leisurely walk from one end of town to the other in about 10 minutes and certainly no taxis are ever really needed. Everything is relatively convenient to you regardless of where you stay (even between upper- and lower-town) so don’t let hotel, restaurants or tourist locations throw you as they did to me. To start, the hotel does not provide parking but this really isn’t much of a problem as there is an underground parking garage not 100 feet from the hotel at $12 per day and we never had a problem getting a first floor spot. Getting into the hotel, there is no lounge or reception area in the hotel to relax or to people-watch after walking around during the day which was pretty surprising to me (there is an 8 by 8 foot little room just off of the elevators with a small couch but I don’t think that it really counts as a lounge and certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable sitting there for any length of time). The staff at this supposedly three star hotel was pretty much useless – when we checked in, the junior suite which I prepaid in advance was so small it looked like an entry-level room – when we inquired if the room was in fact a junior suite, we were told that it was only a superior room, the hotel was totally booked and there was nothing that could be done about it. We were later told that the room we were in was an upgrade from a superior room but by then we were so totally confused and frustrated that we just bit our tongues and decided to move on (as an aside, forget about speaking to a manager as there isn’t one on the premises so good luck if you have a problem in any way while staying there). The rooms are sparsely decorated in a very modern way – a lot of dark wood, glass and metal. The lighting is also modernistic and relies heavily on backlighting and provides a harsh, garish and uncomfortable feeling in the room– the wall mirror and bed headboard (both of which are backlit) are on one switch so either all lights in the room are on or off. The one desk light that I presume was on a separate circuit had a cheap plastic-covered modernistic type of cylindrical shade which didn’t work anyway. The closet – if you can call it that – was built into an armoire type of structure (which also housed the refrigerator and television) and was about 12” (yes, that’s twelve inches) wide which you can imagine is totally useless (we kept our clothes mostly in our bags and my wife had to keep her dresses laid out on the floor to avoid them from being wrinkled in the closet if you can believe that). The bathroom was generally nice with the shower having good temperature control and excellent pressure. In keeping with their modern flair, the faucet for the small bathroom sink protruded directly over and to the exact center of the sink such that shaving, washing your face or brushing your teeth causes the water to splash all over the vanity and onto the floor instead of going into the sink which we found to be odd. We had a nice view overlooking rue de St. Anne which is a pedestrian walkway now and not open to vehicle traffic which is nice however the windows were sealed shut with screws and calking so that we couldn’t open them to better enjoy the ambiance. The biggest drawback to this is that you then have to depend upon the air conditioning system for comfort which we found had dramatic temperature swings and had to constantly be adjusted. Breakfast at the small restaurant in the hotel was actually not bad and was definitely much better than the breakfast we had at the Frontenac which was not much better than diner food. A young girl at the front who was totally clueless (we were equally clueless why she was even there in the first place to receive guests) randomly and without knowledge recommended restaurants that were obvious tourist traps when we specifically requested otherwise apparently just to provide a response to appease us. When we asked another clueless front desk staff member to make a restaurant reservation he asked US if we had the phone number! It is worth noting that we had pretty good success consulting with the concierge at the Frontenac who was very helpful for excellent restaurant recommendations and reservations. Upon checking out, yet another man (apparently there is only one person attending to the front desk at any given time) could not provide a receipt or bill in any way for our stay after requesting one several times so that we could get a hotel tax refund – again, we just bit our tongues instead of getting into an argument. I can certainly understand that someone reading this review would think that we simply cannot be satisfied but we are actually down-to-earth people who expect a certain minimum level of pleasure and enjoyment in their hotel. We were expecting a boutique type of hotel but I certainly wouldn’t call this one as others have as it really is not in the same class. In the end, I didn’t think that this three star hotel was worth the price relative to other four star hotels in the area. As another reviewer noted in this forum, we really wanted to like this hotel but I would recommend just going to a four-star hotel to avoid all of the frustration that this property provided to us.
Fantastic!
by TripAdvisor Member DavefromJersey
Just stayed two nights at the Sainte-Anne and I couldn't have imagined staying at a nicer hotel. Location was superb. The price $86 for the budget room - couldn't be beat. Coming from New York, I was expecting the budget room to be a shoebox. It was small, but thoughtfully designed and beautifully furnished. I will most definitely be returning.
Photos
At the 2010 Quebec City Summer Music Festival
Stage at la Place d'Youville
The bar
And A Few More Beers!
Forum Posts
Quebec City Music Festival Summer 2009
by Beljanewood
Hello - I am planning on attending next year's international music festival in Quebec City. I will be staying at Club Intrawest-Tremblant, 200 Chemin des Saisons, Mont Tremblant, QC J8E 1G1. How far away is that from the festival area and what kind of public transportation is available. Thanks in advance,
Belinda
Re: Quebec City Music Festival Summer 2009
by Pomerol
Hi Belinda,
What music festival are you specifically referring to. Or are you talking about the summer festival?
In any event, Mont Tremblant is quite a distance from Quebec City and certainly not easily reachable by public transportation. It is a good 4-hour drive so you can add on another hour or two by public transportation. I assume there are buses from Tremblant to Montreal (2 hours) and then you can take a bus or train from Montreal to Quebec CIty (around 3 hours). Are you really sure you want to commute from Tremblant to Quebec City???
Re: Quebec City Music Festival Summer 2009
by Beljanewood
Yes it is the summer festival and no I don't want to travel 4 hours. Thanks for the info. It was impossible to tell the distance from the maps I was looking at.
Re: Quebec City Music Festival Summer 2009
by kebec1
i go to this festival every year. i drive from Boston (7.5 hours). i always stay in the old city (within the city walls). you will enjoy the fest much more if you do the same. you will have no trouble getting a reservation if you do it early (i.e., several months in advance). the small hotels within the walls are cheaper than the big hotels.
festival schedule: www.infofestival.com (hasn't been updated yet for 2009).
have fun!
PS: best resto: le Saint-Amour, rue Ste-Ursule. go for lunch M-F to save money.
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