Casino de Charlevoix

Casino de Charlevoix is small, and it does not matter. The gaming floor runs to about 25,000 square feet with roughly 700 slot machines and 20 tables, which places it near the bottom of this guide on scale. It is attached to the Fairmont Le Manoir Richelieu, a 405-room château-style hotel built in 1929 on a clifftop above the Saint Lawrence, and that combination produces one of the best travel experiences in Canadian hospitality.

La Malbaie is ninety minutes northeast of Quebec City along a coastal road that is itself worth the drive. The Charlevoix region is a UNESCO biosphere reserve — whale watching, hiking, a serious food and cider culture — and the manor sits in the middle of it with a golf course, a spa and views across a river that is thirty kilometres wide at this point.

Anyone travelling primarily for the gaming floor should go elsewhere. Anyone travelling for a weekend in one of the most striking hotels in Canada, with a casino as the evening option, will find it hard to beat.

Around 700 slot machines fill a compact, well-appointed room with a current cabinet mix and a modest progressive selection. The space is quiet by casino standards, and on a weekday in shoulder season it can feel close to private.

Roughly 20 table games cover blackjack, roulette, baccarat and a couple of carnival games. Limits are moderate, the pit is small, and the professional dealers here have time to talk, which makes it one of the more pleasant floors in Canada for a beginner despite the lack of scale.

There is no poker room and only a small high-limit salon. The floor closes earlier than a big-city property and the whole operation is calibrated to a hotel guest's evening rather than an all-night session.

Fairmont Le Manoir Richelieu is the reason to come. Opened in 1929 in the château style, it holds 405 rooms, a spa, indoor and outdoor pools and a clifftop golf course, and the public rooms — the lobby, the terraces, the long corridors — have the scale and material quality of an era that does not build hotels like this any more.

Rooms vary considerably. The renovated river-view categories are excellent; some of the older interior rooms are compact and show their age. Ask for a river view specifically and treat the difference in rate as the actual price of the trip. The outdoor pool terrace above the Saint Lawrence is among the best hotel spaces in the country.

Several restaurants across the manor, from a formal dining room to a casual bistro and a bar with the view. Charlevoix has a genuinely serious regional food culture — cheeses, cider, lamb, veal — and the kitchens use it. Standards are high and prices are Fairmont prices. The region's own producers and restaurants along the coastal road are worth at least one lunch.

The casino runs a modest programme of music and seasonal events, and the manor hosts its own calendar. The real entertainment is the region: whale watching from Baie-Sainte-Catherine, hiking in the Hautes-Gorges, the coastal drive, the golf course on the cliff. This is a property where the surroundings comprehensively out-programme the venue.