Question: When do you need an orientation on how to sleep in your hotel bed?

Answer: When you are spending the night at the Ice Hotel or Hôtel de Glace in Québec.

For the last five years, a marvel of ice and snow has been built just outside Québec City, each year more elaborate and fanciful than the last. It takes 15,000 tons of snow and 500 tons of ice to build it. Weather permitting, the hotel is open from January through April.

And, yes, you can truly spend the night on a block of ice in the hotel, which also features two art galleries and an exhibition area, a chapel (dozens of weddings are performed there each year), plus two hot tubs, the ABSOLUT Ice Bar and a nightclub.

The Ice Hotel is on the grounds of Station touristique Duchesnay, which includes the Auberge Duchesnay, a 48-room property, as well as several lodges and 14 villas, about 30 minutes from Québec City. Guests of both the Auberge and the Ice Hotel wander back and forth between the properties.

An intricate reception desk, made entirely of ice, stands in the front entry.

Ice Hotel guests dine at the Auberge restaurant and can flee to it if they can’t stand the cold. (Rooms at the lodge are reserved for Ice Hotel guests in case they can’t hack it, but that happens rarely.)

More about the bed, though, which is the first thing on anybody’s mind when they hear about the hotel. While you are really on top of a block of ice, there are a few things in between you and that cold surface: a thick foam mattress covered by a fleece sheet and a wool blanket or soft deer pelt.

At 9 p.m., a sub-zero sleeping bag is delivered to your room. These sleeping bags keep you warm in temperatures as low as -22° F (-30° C), or so my group was told during orientation.

Last year when I went with a friend, the Ice Hotel was completely full on a Sunday night in February. At the mandatory orientation, a staffer explained how to use the narrow sleeping bags called “mummy bags,” going so far as to get into it. To everyone’s complete disbelief, she claimed the best way to sleep in it was in the nude.

Considering that during winter in Québec the outside temperatures can vary from 13° F (-25° C) in January to 41° F (5° C) in March, this was a little hard to swallow. She swore it was true, though, explaining that if you sweat inside the sleeping bag it creates moisture, which would then make you cold and truly miserable.

The hotel has 34 rooms and theme suites, ranging from a children’s room with a slide connecting two beds to doubles to full-size beds. Prices start at US$ 515 (CAD$ 595) per couple and include dinner, a drink in the Ice Bar, breakfast, a tour and sleeping gear (as well as a back-up room at the lodge). Add-ons are available, such as dog-sledding and ice skating, for additional fees.