A quick visit to Quebec for some winter sports. First, to Quebec City to meet with friends and enjoy the Winter Festival.
The view from our brunch venue. In this room, Churchill, FDR, and King met to finalize plans for D-Day. 
After brunch, we went to check out some of the day's festivities, which included a canoe race across the frozen river, half paddling, half dragging boats across the ice, and, apparently, another half eating bacon. We on the other hand were busy recreating photos from our parents' youth.
We also managed to join the natives for some sport on the Plains of Abraham, an excellent park with snowshoe and cross-country trails, very busy on a Sunday afternoon.
The frozen waterfall behind us, just north of the city, apparently very famous for ice-climbing. Not on our itinerary.
Onwards though, to the area of Baie Saint Paul and the Le Massif Ski Resort in Charlevoix. The extent of our X-games, but another wonderful park, and very nearly entirely to ourselves.
Having exercised, it was on to the slopes. With beverage, naturally.
Ozeki Junmai Uma-shiboritate. Thank you, Joel-san!
What I think I looked like after fortification. Note the frozen river at the bottom. First time I've ever skied at a place where the lodge was at the top of the mountain, and you ski down. Very cool views out over the river. And very quiet and uncrowded, super conditions.
What I probably looked like after my beverage.
This Kizakura gold-flake sake was a gift from my Japanese teacher, and I intended to drink it slopeside, but after a rather spectacularly silly fall, in which I slid face-first down the mountain for about 150 yards...anyways, I was going back up the mountain and I realised that the bottle had fallen out of my pocket... now, I remembered while falling seeing an odd object sliding down the mountain in front of me, but it hadn't occurred to me then that it might be the sake... well, a couple of hours later, on the last run of the last day, having gotten lost going across the mountain, I found myself staring at that same stretch of mountain, and thought... could it possibly... why, yes, it could! Buried in nice little mound at the bottom of the hill was this bottle! Haven't drunk it yet, lucky bottle!
Wandering through the village, we saw a sign that said, "support your local microbrewery." We're very good at taking instructions.
For dinner, Tourtiere, a local speciality, basically a meat pie.
Sunrise over the Baie Saint Paul. 
I've long been enamoured of Matsumoto Shuzo's old wooden buildings, with it's red-bricked octogonal chimney, located at the boundary of Kyoto's Fushimi district, but had never tried their sake before picking up a bottle on my most recent visit. 
Oddly, this does not appear on their website, and does not belong to either of their Momo no Shizuku or Hinodezakari brands, but the proprietor of the store assured me that it was indeed Matsumoto sake. And, a sake that tasted more like bananas I have yet to come across. Soft and round without being particularly sweet, a pretty dancing partner for sure, but bananas.
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