My wife and I had our plan all set. A mid-winter escape—not to southern, beachy latitudes but, rather, a zig when everybody else seemed to be zagging: To the north, Canada, Quebec. And no, not to Montreal, but to a remote-ish inn tucked into the snowy woods next to a frozen lake. Shockingly, our kids were on board with all of this—there was, after all, a ski mountain nearby—until we told them we would be driving.
If you’ve ever spent eight hours in a car with two young children, you’re likely questioning my sanity at this moment. My children certainly were.
What they didn’t know: Mercedes had loaned me their Maybach SUV—the Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600 4MATIC SUV, to be precise. Suffice to say: Problem solved. Once my kids saw the backseat expanse which would be their paradise for the trip, I could have told them the drive was 36 hours and they would probably have thanked me.
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz
The central conceit of these wondrous vehicles: While they’re exquisite to drive, with all the power and precision you could ask for, they’re deceptively elegant, in almost a minimal way, from the outside. Step into one, though, and prepare to have your mind blown: Lush leather seats, of course, which can be both heated or cooled, and which remember the exact position you’d adjusted it to last time you sat in them, with the back seats reclining almost entirely—adjust your footrests and you essentially have a plush bed to nap or sleep in. The roof is almost entirely retractable, leaving a glass ceiling through which to stargaze while reclining in said plush bed. Oh, and there’s a champagne fridge tucked between the rear seats, replete with flutes (unfortunately, my children were too young to take advantage of this feature).
So, yeah: The drive up was a breeze, with an overnight in a small New Hampshire town (sorry, small town, for our family crashing your bowling alley’s league night) and a meandering finish as we crossed the border and arrived at Manoir Hovey with just enough time to settle in and relax for a bit before dinner.
The 37-room Manoir Hovey and its attendant 35 acres—part of the Relais & Chateaux association—overlook Quebec’s Lake Massawippi just outside the quaint town of North Hatley, about 90 minutes east of Montreal. Initially built in 1900 as a Mount Vernon-inspired summer home for Henry Atkinson, the founder of Georgia Power, who trained up from Atlanta, the property was converted into a hotel in the 1950s and named after a local settler. President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton have stayed there twice, as have former French President Jacques Chirac and his wife, as well as a host of prominent actors, musicians, and the like—though if you’re going there to see celebrities, you’ve probably got the wrong idea. Manoir Hovey may be routinely on lists of Canada’s—and, indeed, the world’s—great hotels, but it’s an extremely low-key kind of chic. Think quiet luxury, and then think quieter.