Montreal Trip Part I

Back in mid-October the kids had Columbus Day off from school so we took the opportunity to visit Montreal for the three-day weekend. Dan had been to Montreal before (his parents grew up in Montreal and all his siblings were born in Quebec), but Quebec was a new province for the kids and me.

On Saturday we drove up through Massachusetts and Vermont, stopping at Ben and Jerry’s in Waterbury, Vermont along the way. Unfortunately, we got a bit of a late start in the morning, so we were unable to take the factory tour. We did of course get some ice cream though.

Dan and I had cones, while the kids opted for milkshakes.

Not sure if I am Ben and Dan is Jerry, or vice versa

We visited the “Flavor Graveyard”, which was surprisingly hilarious:

Dan was sad while remembering the demise of Rainforest Crunch

I don’t remember this flavor but we loved the Monty Python reference.

We made it to Montreal around 7pm, found our hotel and had some dinner at a local restaurant, where we were greeted with a hearty “Bonsoir!”. While French is the primary language, fortunately almost everyone speaks English. While my conversational French is pretty horrible, one morning I did actually manage to order my McDonald’s breakfast completely in French (“Un café grande avec lait et sucre et un Oeuf McMuffin, s’il vous plait” “Avec jambon ou saucisse?” “Jambon, s’il vous plait”)*

Dan did a great job picking the hotel location, which was within walking distance of Mont Royal and Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal). Alice liked the hotel because it was “fancy”. We had a great view of Downtown and Mont Royal (Royal Mountain, although more of a hill than a mountain) from our room on the 15^th floor:

 The hill in the distance is Mont Royal

View with kid silhouettes:

Alice named this building “The Cat Building”:

Sunday morning we walked to Mont Royal and took the stairs up to the viewing area near the Chateau.

 That’s the Saint-Laurent river in the background.

It was a little breezy up there.

After trekking back down the 400-odd steps (Charlie and I counted them on the way down but we don’t remember the exact number), we walked back to the hotel. On our way we managed to find an entrance to the “Underground City”, which is a bunch of Montreal building basements connected by tunnels. Apparently you can get to a large portion of the city without ever going above ground (very useful in winter!) The part we saw was basically like a ginormous underground shopping mall. We had lunch at one of the food courts. Dan finally got his poutine** (he was hoping to get some during our trip through Ontario, but didn’t get the chance).

Poutine!!

After lunch we took the Metro to the Notre Dame Basilica in the Vieux-Montreal (Old Montreal) quarter, the oldest area in the city. The basilica is fairly nondescript from the outside, but the inside was absolutely breath-taking.

The altar area. 

The whole church was covered in beautiful carvings, gold-painted filigree and the side aisles included numerous stained glass windows and oil paintings. The pipe organ had approximately 7,000 pipes.

Close-up of the altar area

After the basilica, we wandered along the narrow cobblestone streets of Vieux-Montreal, ending up on Place Jaques-Cartier, a plaza including the oldest Montreal monument, Nelson’s Column. Across the street was the Hotel de Ville of Montreal, which I only just now figured out is the Montreal City Hall and not a historic hotel. In front of City Hall there were some gorgeous planting beds:

Alice next to a huge urn made out of plants

The kids and I in front of the Montreal emblem.

 To be continued...
 

*We mostly ate breakfast at Tim Hortons because that’s just what you do in Canada, but by Monday I wanted something a little less donutty. The kids and Dan were at Tim Hortons while I grabbed my own petit déjuner at Mcdonald's.

**Poutine is French fries topped with gravy and cheese curds and is a Quebecois delicacy.