Chateau Frontenac by Nancy Lyon

Le Chateau Frontenac is the "World's Most Photographed Hotel." Or so it's been said by so many public relations and marketing heads that it must be true by now. I came to Quebec City with my Nikon N90 and my Minolta Dimage EX digital to add to the millions or billions of images of this Canadian icon dramatically perched atop Cap Diamant over the Saint Lawrence River. I would capture its handsome facade of Scottish brick, its French Renaissance burnished copper roofs, towers and turrets, cornices and cupolas rising up out of the only walled city north of the Rio Grande. I would explore its hushed labyrinthian hallways, its fabulous chandelier-lit grand halls and ballrooms hung with tapestries and illumined by stained glass. And I would live out a fantasy entertained by thousands of Quebecers - to stay in one of Le Chateau Frontenac's 605 rooms.

This Grand Dame of Canadian Pacific hotels is named after Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, who governed New France from 1672 to 1698. It was designed by New York architect Bruce Price for William Van Horne, President of Canadian Pacific Railways (CPR) and inaugurated on December 20, 1893 with 170 rooms. Since then it has grown an 18-storey tower and wings, and bedded kings, queens, emperors, presidents and prime ministers, and celebrities from Edith Piaf, Alfred Hitchcock, to Boris Karloff and Elizabeth Taylor. Its corridors hang with images of Churchill, Roosevelt, DeGaulle, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, Reagan and Nixon and dozens more. And only weeks ago, the heads of state of ten Latin American countries lodged here during the biggest political event on Canadian soil: The Summit of the Americas on free trade. Secret Service and FBI. Red carpets. Riot police. Metal detectors. Tear gas. 25,000+ protestors. President George Bush, Prime Minister Jean Chretien and their ladies and entourage.

This fairytale castle looms larger than the whole history of Quebec and indeed, as the hotel's Executive Chef Jean Soulard has discovered in his world travels, people know Le Chateau Frontenac even if they know nothing of Canada or Quebec. Gourmets flock to this French gastronomic mecca to partake of Soulard's symphonies of flavors, textures and colors composed with fresh Quebec regional products and specialties such as Ile-Verte lamb. They come for the lavish ambience of the four-diamond Le Champlain dining room, to sip a sunset Scotch on the terrace of the Bar St.-Laurent, to celebrate weddings and business deals. But what's it like to stay in this Fairmont hotel which Travel & Leisure Magazine ranks as one of world's 100 grandest, Condé Nast Traveller as one of the top 500 in the world, and Gourmet Magazine as Canada's Number One hotel?

The rack rate for my small sixth floor Fairmont Deluxe room was $735 CN per night (inc. 14.5% tax) and did not include breakfast or the $25 valet parking fee. My attic-shaped room with sloped walls did have a breathtaking view - through small inset windows - of the shimmering St. Lawrence River and L'Ile d'Orleans beyond. It gave me a marvelous balcony seat for the wiry acrobats and jugglers entertaining on the wide Victorian Dufferin Terrace below and buskers lustily singing Summertime, blowing jazzy horns and crushing melancholy accordions into the strangely sweltering May Day night.

While the Chateau's dramatic silhouette is positively bewitching, the interior of my room felt contrived and devoid of magic. My favorite colors are not those of soup - mushroom, mushy peas and oxblood - with watercolors of the same hues fading into the walls. Yet it wasn't the stiff period furnishings and decor that disappointed me or even the very small bathroom, bathtub, and feeble shower pressure, as much as the spirit of ungenerosity conveyed through the thin, small, threadbare, grayish-white bathroom towels; the tiny, thin, plain square of bittersweet chocolate left on my pillow at night; the teeny bottle of Naya spring water placed on the bed table, and the clothes closet containing only four (four!) coathangers. I don't travel with a steamer trunk crammed with ballgowns and petticoats, but four coathangers for a $735 room...? (However, my request for more hangers was promptly and cheerfully fulfilled.)

Despite these stingy manifestations and the air of indifference when I enquired of the Bell Captain why the lobby's Hommes and Femmes were barred to all but those possessing room keys, Le Chateau Frontenac is truly Quebec's People's Castle. It is the centerpiece of the Old City. There is a buzz of joie de vivre and excitement in the lavishly-appointed lobby. There is a happy comingling of eager tourists from Australia to Malaysia to Newfoundland...school kids taking the hotel tour, conventioners from Chicago or Dallas, lovers seeking romance, Quebecois grandmothers on Sunday outings and families brunching after Catholic mass.

I found the hotel staff friendly, helpful and enthusiastic. When I tugged up the steep Rue des Carrieres in my bright yellow 1970 Volkswagen Westfalia and saw that the hotel's parking garage had a low clearance of only six feet, I was cheerfully assured by the doorman that valet Jocelyn Provencher would take care of it. I held my breath as Provencher raised the low clearance sign and, unphased by the wobbly gear shifter, deftly backed Dame Gitane into a tight spot.

I enjoyed a swim in the Chateau's luminous indoor pool and a sunbathe on the terrace. Then I took the Anne Gery Inc. hotel tour with guides posing as 19th century chambermaids, bellboys, night watchmen and chefs, and got an earful of fascinating Chateau history, gossip and anecdotes. In the Chateau's early days you had to have special connections to get a job, even as a chambermaid or bellboy. When I asked a cluster of chambermaid-guides how long they'd worked at the Chateau , they giggled "109 years!" Actually the longest-serving member of the Chateau's staff - room service attendant Lionel Verret - retired at 72 last year to great fanfare after 54 years of loyal service. His son has worked here for two decades.

Le Chateau Frontenac's room rates vary as confoundingly as seats on a jumbo jet. But at any time of year (even in peak July-August), you can find attractive double-occupancy packages (including gastronomic dinner and sumptuous buffet breakfast) for $455CN per night as well as packages featuring everything from skiing, snow mobiling and dog sledding to museum tours, the Quebec Winter Carnival and autumn foliage.

PR manager Nancy Murray showed me around some lovely airy rooms (a few hundred dollars cheaper than mine!) in the Entree Gold Floors - Le Chateau's luxury, 40-room hotel-within-a-hotel, with special lounge, services and concierge. These more recently renovated rooms have larger bathrooms, some with whirlpool baths. When I asked Ms. Murray about the wide disparity of room rates, she laughed and said, "We have ten different seasons here at Le Chateau!"

If you want action, come in summer, when the cafes along Quebec's La Grande Allee throb with late-night chatter. If you want to see romantic Vieux Quebec draped in snowy ermine and sparkling with frosty sapphires, come in winter.