taychellewis Bonjour! We are now leaving Burlington, Vermont, but we’ve spent the last two days in Montreal, Canada. It’s been a great trip, relaxing but busy, and fun for me to practice some French. (We didn’t starve, so I must’ve done alright ordering food for us.) We’re glad to be heading home today though, as no place is quite like South Carolina. However, we could do without more snow. Doesn’t look like that’s in the cards for us.
Thursday morning we packed up and headed to Montreal, with a 30-second stop at the border. Good thing they didn’t find the guns and drugs in our trunk. After our two-hour drive we went straight to the Notre-Dame Basilica, similar to the one in Paris, and took a short tour there. Taylor said it was one of the most incredible buildings he’s ever seen! The pictures don’t do it justice.
Since it wasn’t time to check into our hotel, we walked along the St. Lawrence River (in 20 degree weather) and watched ice skaters. We got our only photo together here – seeing as we forgot our big camera on this trip, all our photos have had to be on our iPhones 🙁
We checked into our hotel then and had a late lunch at Sandouchon, a Peruvian fast food place in a nearby underground mall. Their chicken sandwiches were delicious! Back to the hotel to relax, we watched a Harry Potter movie and hung out until late evening when we decided to take a walk. We bundled up and walked around the blocks surrounding our hotel, and ended up eating at a local place for dinner called Five Guys. If you ever visit Montreal, get one of their chocolate milkshakes. They’re the bomb!
Friday morning we decided to fill our time with nearby museums and a park, so we stopped at the Humble Lion Café on our way to Musee Redpath at McGill University. It had a lot of cool animal displays and was free to visit.
Next we walked to Musee des Beaux-Arts de Montreal which also has free exhibits, and spent a few hours there. There were some great Realist and Impressionist paintings we liked, but the modern stuff we didn’t. I think I could’ve had something displayed there, and I don’t even have art displayed at my parents’ house. That’s pretty sad.
We had Portuguese chicken wraps at Rotisserie Charcos for lunch and headed to Mt. Royal Park. It’s a big park, covered in a foot or so of snow, and there were areas set up for sledding, tubing, and ice skating. We spent a couple of hours walking there and eating snow (my favorite).
After all that walking, 4.5 miles to be exact, we rewarded ourselves with a bath and another Harry Potter movie. For dinner we found a local pizza place online with over 75 different types of personal pizzas, and planned to have cheesecake and coffee for dessert. The biggest disappointment of our trip was that it was closed when we walked there (without explanation!). After our hopes were dashed, we had dinner at Burger King, got ice cream at McDonalds, and spent the rest of the evening in the hotel. The temperature was getting down to the teens anyway, so time to get inside.
However, we did visit the heated pool for a while, which was on the second floor and opened up to the Montreal sky. It was awesome! Until we had to get out. That part was less than awesome.
Finally, as I said before, this morning we packed up and drove back to Burlington to fly out. Here’s a photo of our Montreal hotel though, with its incredible windows.
We’re now waiting for our flight, and eager to sit by the fire when we get home. Thanks for reading this far! We’ll post again on our next trip in February – to Paris and London!
Love,
Taylor & Michelle
