Montreal, Quebec

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to visit Montreal with Leon and Min-Chee. This was the first time visiting Montreal in 5 years for me and that time, my family didn't really see anything other than Old Montreal, since we were just merely stopping in the city after our east coast adventure. It was a great opportunity to get away from the city for the summer and everyone in Ottawa has to take advantage of the short 2-hour drive (well, I consider it quite short, compared to my long journeys home). The drive to Montreal is even better when there is good company!

After a slight delay in our departure time, we managed to get to Montreal in time for lunch. Our first stop was to a bagel shop. We chose to go to La Boulangerie St-Viateur Bagel Shop, which is one of the more famous ones for the oven-baked bagels. After snapping a few pictures and purchasing a bag of assorted bagels, we were on our way to the famous Schwartz's! This popular eatery is famous for its smoked meat and boy, was it ever popular. Line-ups at the restaurant were a norm so Leon suggested that Minch and I line up while he looked for parking. Thinking we might have to wait for almost half an hour, we were going to get the meat to go and then eat at Mont-Royal. But with our luck, in about 10 minutes, a waiter from the restaurant came out and asked how many parties were waiting. Since we only had three, they had three spots available at the counter and we went in! It was so packed inside! I ordered a small plate of smoked meat, not knowing how "small" a small was. It turned out to be pretty big for me. I could barely finish half of the plate and had to take the rest to go. Oh wells. The meat was delicious and very tender. It literally melted in your mouth.

After our meal, we went to Mont-Royal to take some pictures of Montreal. the view was quite nice. Then we hiked a bit to the Cross, which lights up at night. On our way to the cross, Minch decided it would be fun to feed a squirrel with a piece of a bagel. She holds out her hand and the squirrel bites her thumb instead! It was too funny. Good thing she had a bandaid with her! After snapping a few pictures, we proceeded to head back down and head to Old Montreal and the port area.

Driving around Montreal is ridiculous. There are some intersections where you can't turn left and as always on Montreal Island, you can't turn right on a red. Because of these restrictions, we had to go around in circles for a bit. Good thing I was a pretty good navigator and got a hang of Leon's GPS map. Phewf. After some endless circling, we finally managed to find a parking spot in Chinatown. Walked around Old Montreal and snapped some pictures. I love walking down there. It's so much different than Toronto's Harbourfront and other port areas I've been to. One thing that I did notice while walking around that area was the number of stores that sell Formula One Racing gear. They're very into their racing, just like they are with the Habs.

We finally stopped for ice cream, after endless talk of "ice cream! creme glacee!" from Minch. I ordered in French! It was just a natural thing to do. I have a tendency to say things in French when I'm in a "French" atmosphere and everyone at La Cremerie was speaking French, so I figured I'd order in French too. Surprisingly, during my time in Montreal, I heard more English speakers and non-French speakers than French speakers. Maybe it was just because I was in touristy spots.

For dinner, we decided to go to Crescent Street (on the advice of Dom and Helen) where all the trendy restaurants and pubs are. Seeing as it was a Saturday night, most of the pubs were very loud and rambunctious and we didn't want to have a nice dinner in such an atmosphere. After walking around and checking out several menus, we came across Angelo's cuisine italienne. At first, we felt a little under dressed, but we made sure we were on our best behaviour. It was a really nice restaurant and the service was great. Very friendly. The food was deeeeelicious. I ordered (yes...en francais) a grilled Atlantic salmon with vegetables and the portions were bigger than what I had expected. In the end, we spent a little more time at dinner than expected and did not leave Montreal until 9pm.

Overall, I had a great time on this trip. It was a really great way just to get away from the city and to hang out with two of my friends. Too bad we could only spend a day there. In the future, I hope to stay there a little longer and be a real tourist by taking the Metro and visiting other touristy places, just to see what Montreal has to offer.

As for my next out-of-town adventure, I'm hoping maybe I can go to Kingston in the fall to check out some of their sights, particularly RMC and Fort Henry.

Some of my pictures are posted on my Flickr account -- link is on the left! Enjoy!