Hotel Hellions: Le Fairmont’s Most Wanted

There’s just something about a hotel that is tantalizingly irresistible – those many long, maze-like halls lined with locked doors teeming with hidden stories just waiting to be uncovered, the odd little nooks and crannies, the promise of luggage carts, the fancy bathrooms…

So when we accidentally ended up at Montreal’s Le Fairmont instead of Le Fairmount, our intended destination, we could not help but get a little sidetracked.

Let us explain. Le Fairmount Theatre is a renowned mid-size concert venue, one of Montreal’s finest for dancing, and we were going with a group of friends to see the trap duo Stooki Sound. It may not have been our favorite group or genre (hell, we hadn’t heard of them the day before) but we were all back in town and wanted to celebrate and the promise of dancing lured us out into the frosty night.

Our friends were leading the charge, as the show actually was their favorite group and genre, so they were the ones who called the cars for all of us. We piled into three different Ubers and went along our merry way, chatting and laughing and paying no attention to the streets. When the car stopped we piled out, oblivious for one more blissful second. The driver screeched away at the very moment we shut the door behind us and realized we had made a huge mistake.

Off by one letter, but about 15 blocks.

We stepped into the foyer of Queen Elizabeth’s Fairmont with nothing but the most innocent intentions of waiting for our next ride out of the cold, but the hotel lobby was glittering and sparsely populated… Enticing to the nth degree.

Perhaps flashing back to our first year of university when we traveled to Quebec City and escaped the cold by running wild around Le Chateau Frontenac, we exchanged mischievous glances and dashed up the stairs to explore. The hotel was beautiful and gleaming, so up and up and up we went, giggling all the way. We found a pitcher with water and realized quite suddenly we were parched.

Let me tell you, that was the most delicious glass of water we have ever had.

Our friend was trying desperately to ignore our antics and sort out the Uber so we could catch up to the others, but we were kind of content to continue gleefully roaming the halls, anxious to make a go at using our contraband key card (it had been lying innocently next to the pitcher of water, just begging to be picked up) …until someone caught onto our game when we got a little too brazen on a stage in an empty ballroom.

“Bonjour…? Hello…?” we heard a man’s voice call. We didn’t hear if he said anything else – we had already dashed away.

We know. Heaps mature.

The second Uber driver dropped us off right in front of Le Fairmount. We knew it was the right place this time because the bass was thumping into the street. After all of that, we didn’t get in because someone (I won’t name names here because it totally wasn’t one of us…) forgot her ID (…Kelly!)

The bouncer was actually incredibly kind. He told us, with what seemed like genuine sympathy we completely didn’t deserve, that he could see we were clearly not 17 but his hands were tied. We, of course, understood and the two of us walked away laughing while our friends enjoyed the trap music more than we would have, another Montreal misadventure under our belts.