Remember last July when Andy and I took a little trip to Québec City? Well, we liked it so much up there we decided to do Montréal this time! (In truth, we had intended to do Montréal last year, but our vacation week coincided with the largest jazz festival in the world, which explained why we couldn't seem to find a hotel room or get a dinner reservation, so we pivoted and ended up absolutely adoring Québec City! This year the stars aligned and the jazz fest was the week before our vacation.) It's just over 300 miles from home, so we did each drive all in one day, going up through Vermont and coming home through New Hampshire.
What a lovely city! We were surprised how big it is, especially compared to Québec City. (Andy had been to Montréal for EXPO '67 and understandably doesn't remember a single thing about that trip; I went once for a long weekend when I was about 21 and don't remember much about that either…) We knew we wouldn't be able to even come close to doing everything, so we picked our spots and had a great time. We stayed in Old Montréal, which we liked a lot—it's near the Old Port neighborhood on the river, which is full of shops and bars and restaurants. Our hotel was fantastic, and one of the best parts was our concierge, Ricardo, who sat down with us every morning and drew out a map with a list of "adventures" for the day. All of his suggestions were spot-on.
The first full day was kind of rainy, so we spent most of it at the Museum of Fine Arts—and even that was more than we could do in one visit! We also explored the "underground city," which at first I thought was just going to be a bunch of tunnels connecting everything, but in fact there are entire malls and food courts down there! We also did a sort of trippy immersive exhibit thing at Oasis. You would never know there's so much going on underground when you're out and about!
The next day Ricardo clearly wanted us to enjoy the beautiful weather, so he sent us to Mount Royal, the large hill/small mountain that the city is named after. It is a huge and glorious park (designed by none other than Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park in NYC), but OMG did we walk a lot that day! To wit:
The next day we walked around in the Old Port and sat by the river for a bit. We also went to the Notre-Dame Basilica, which is quite amazing and worth a visit. And we did Pointe-à-Callière, which is a fascinating archaeology and history museum. It's built on the ruins of the original city, so you can walk on glass floors and look down and see the old foundations! And walk down the tunnel that was once the original sewer system. Pretty cool!
We had some wonderful meals, including the requisite lunch at Schwartz's Deli for their "world-famous original smoked meat sandwich." I tried to order a turkey sandwich but the guy behind the counter wouldn't let me. "The turkey is cold. You can get that anywhere." So smoked meat it was!
We really had to make an effort to not have steak frites at dinner every night. The best was the last night at Moishe's, a really super steak restaurant (the kind where they bring out a box of steak knives and you choose which one you want…).
I realize that I neglected to get a single photo of us together, but I did manage to capture some of our cocktail hours! For example:
And here I am goofing around with a bronze statue guy:
I had the same experience in Québec City where I could read 100% of the French signs, menus, etc. but had a terrible time understanding people speaking with the Québécois accent! But this time I did notice that in a few instances when I spoke French, the person replied to me in French, which means that either my accent is not as bad as I imagined or they were just being nice! We did find everyone we met to be super nice, and the city is so clean and pleasant. I can definitely see us going back sometime to do more exploring.
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