It’s not the expense of an Alpine ski vacation that prevents many New Yorkers from slipping across the slopes at Chamonix Mont-Blanc several times a season, but that rare commodity called time. While most ski enthusiasts spend long weekends in Vermont and New Hampshire, Quebec is a relatively untapped paradise for the New York skier, despite having the largest concentration of ski-able hills in North America. The flight to Tremblant, Canada’s first international resort airport, will land you plum in the middle of the Laurentian region, an approximately 13,700-square-mile area with lakes and villages. It’s rather like Switzerland, but drivable.

A weekend in Quebec bears many of the hallmarks of an actual European vacation: foreign accents, colorful banknotes, delicious provincial cuisine, and the metric system. The province offers all this but without a transatlantic flight, stressful transfers, obtuse check-in staff, and a Kafka-esque experience at passport control.

Montreal is a bustling bilingual city that prides itself on being a cultural center. If you only have a weekend to spare, start by unwinding in Montreal on Friday night, especially if you choose to drive. Then take the 90-minute journey north into the mountains on Saturday morning for two days of skiing and jaw-dropping vistas.

Montreal, founded in 1642, is the third-largest French-speaking city in the world after Paris and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A 20-minute taxi ride from the Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport is the Hotel Le St-James (355, rue St-Jacques, 514-841-3111, www.hotellestjames.com), the sort of place where Eloise – now that she’s homeless – would fit right in. Located in the historic district along the rue St-Jacques, called Old Montreal, Hotel Le St-James is one of the city’s most recent attractions and looks like a smaller version of the Plaza. It’s difficult to believe that it’s only a little more than three years old, since the beautifully austere restored exterior is a paragon of Second Empire architecture. The lobbies and corridors are pristine and opulent, with handpicked objets d’art peppering the 61 individually designed rooms and suites. Sales manager Sebastien Cornellier is especially proud of the concierge service.

There is plenty of exploring to do in Old Montreal, especially on rue St-Paul, which is home to some of the city’s finest restaurants, bistros, and lounges. The House of Jazz (2060 Aylmer Street, 514-842-8656, www.houseofjazz.ca), near the Hotel Le St-James, is one of the most famous jazz venues in Canada, known for hosting world-class talent and for their Louisiana-style chicken-and-ribs combo.

The Hotel Le St-James’s own restaurant, XO, was once a bankers’ hall. It boasts a lavish Grand Salon with two mezzanines worthy of any opera house. There’s also a spa and fitness facility offering a plethora of treatments, from an exfoliation aromatherapy salt glow for $93 (all prices USD and subject to exchange-rate fluctuations) to a 60-minute couples massage for $212. Rates at Hotel Le St-James begin at approximately $340 a night for double occupancy and rise in varying increments to $4,240 a night for the Terrace Apartment.

On Saturday morning, after breakfasting at XO on a salmon-and-mushroom omelet accompanied by matured Quebec cheeses and Parisian breads, it’s time to venture up to Mont Tremblant (www.tremblant.ca), where the 932 square miles of Mont Tremblant National Park promise everything you could ever want from a winter wonderland: Think dog-sledding rides and supervised ice climbing. If you fly into Montreal, you can rent a car or catch one of several daily buses to Mont Tremblant. If you decide to forgo the city altogether in favor of more slope time, there is a direct $349 flight with Voyageur Airways to Mont Tremblant International Airport from Newark International Airport, which takes about 90 minutes. Flights leave on Thursday at 7 p.m. and return Sunday at 4 p.m. On touching down at Mont Tremblant, passengers entering the oversize logcabin terminal are warmly greeted with a cock tail. The transfer service from airport to hotel is also painless.

There are approximately 94 runs at Mont Tremblant, with the longest, Nansen, about 3.7 miles. The range of difficulty of each trail varies. There are 16 runs for beginners, 10 for experts, and more than 60 runs for intermediates and advanced skiers and snowboarders.

There are plenty of places to stay at Tremblant, from suites to spa hotels. The four-star Ermitage du Lac is Tremblant’s latest gem. Each of the 69 rooms and suites has a small kitchen, and most include a fireplace and balcony. Comfort is taken seriously at this hotel, and guests can recover from a long day of skiing with a soak in the hot tub and a night of sleep on down-filled bedding. Prices start at about $126 a night, including breakfast and a guided tour of the mountain on skis or snowboard.

Local dining options are plentiful. Aux Truffes, in the boutique-filled pedestrian village, is a fine dining bistro with a seasonal degustation menu, an a la carte menu, and an exquisite table du chef menu. Although the veal medallions with a Que bec raw milk cheese sauce, served with foie gras risotto rolled in eggplant, sound tempting, the best value is the table du chef menu, a gastronomic eight-course meal for only $85.

If you’re on a family vacation, check out the Mont Blanc ski resort, which has the second largest area of ski terrain (40 trails) in the Laurentians next to Mont Tremblant, and strives to be “the most family-friendly ski resort in Quebec,” according to Michael Robinson, who co-owns the resort with his brother, Bill. The brothers say they’re committed to keeping the prices at Mont Blanc affordable for families and believe that Mont Blanc offers the lowest ski prices of all the major resorts. An inclusive $420 package to Mont Blanc (www.skimontblanc.com) includes five nights accommodation, five breakfasts and dinners, four lift tickets at Mont Blanc, and one life ticket at Mont Tremblant.

The hotel at Mont Blanc also boasts a renovated bar, which is more welcoming to family activities than the designer lounges for which Mont Tremblant is well known. Parents can park themselves on couches before the fire while children watch movies on an oversize screen. With more than 85 instructors at the ski school, Mont Blanc is an ideal place to actually learn to ski, and a new “Ski and Play” program is geared specifically for children between 3 and 5.

Most ski resorts in Quebec offer package deals, which are excellent values – especially since you’re paying in Canadian, and not American, dollars. So you can save up for that Alpine vacation while enjoying the weekend closer to home.