I think if I had to pick a Canadian city to live in, I’d pick Montreal. It’s beautiful, cultured, the people are polite and friendly, the art galleries are free and there are tons of green parks. I didn’t have one bad meal there and you can buy beer and wine at the corner stores.
In other words, it’s very civilized.
My first day there we (we meaning me, my sister and three of her friends from assorted corners of Canada) all went out to do a little retail therapy. The apartment we rented was great, on a side street on the end of an amazing area, lots of independent retailers and restaurants, bars and deppaneurs. We stopped for lunch and I ate (almost) poutine. Some stores made me laugh:
And I bought nothing. We came home due to excessive tiredness.
Wednesday we all trouped out to Old Montreal to visit Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal. I know, maybe it’s hypocritical of me, but it truly is an amazing piece of architecture, full of beautiful paintings, sculpture and stained glass:
Then we went through the side streets and looked at street artists work and wound up at the infamous Foufounes Electriques, which I thought was a full on punk rock bar, but seems to be a disco in it’s off times. And was originally a gay bar. Go figure. It was cool, sort of like Dee’s with less grafitti and more art. I ended up heading home early, on my own, that night. I couldn’t take one more minute of sitting on a smoky patio. Ugh. Smoking.
I also bought my CJ bling that day.
The next day my sister and I went out alone to see The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, particularly to see the John Lennon/Yoko Ono show. It was so good, both Megan and I getting totally choked up in the first room. The show is split into a bunch of small rooms, each with a different theme, all with music, video, art, it was truly amazing. And because we went mid week, there weren’t tons of people jostling for a spot to see everything. AND the museum is FREE. FREE, Torontonians, can you even imagine that??? The room with the stamps (interactively, you’re supposed to stamp them on the maps provided) also has a phone that Yoko calls every day, just to check in. I would have DIED of happiness if I’d been the one to answer it. Just so long as she doesn’t sing. I also took a couple pictures of displays there illicitly. Oops.
Next day we all went to the village (read ‘gay’) for brunch and more stomping around. Megs and I went to the Insectarium in the afternoon and had a great time there too. Who’da thunk that bugs would be so cool? Yeah, maybe I am not such a huge fan of them crawling around in my house, but it was a great museum. Small enough to bring kids without them getting bored quickly. It’s attached to a botanical garden so we took the (also FREE-or perhaps included in the cover) mini-train around the whole thing and wound up in the Japanese garden where I took, oh, a thousand pictures of the fish there. Have I mentioned before how much I love fish?
That was the last day-the next morning we caught a cab at 5am.
A million thanks to Shannon who paid for the trip for my birthday!
I had so much fun too!!
Je t’aime Montreal.
You have described our adventure better than I ever could have and I am sooooo glad you came!
Thanks Shannon, for sending my sister to me for an amazing vacation!
So glad you had a nice trip! :)
Best gift ever!
Glad to hear you had a blast and got to spend it with your sis and friends. Life is good.
The ORLY store made me laugh really loud, and the other one made me remember that Kevin and I used to call each other “cooch-tards” after seeing that word on a bank machine in Windsor a while back.
I have never been to Montreal and now I really want to go. That’s an amazing birthday gift!
Well, Montreal is seriously amazing and probably the best city for an all girls weekend.
Although, I do hope I am invited for the same party next year in St.John’s…
I live here (as in Montreal) and I have yet to go to the botanical gardens and reading your post makes me want to go REAL bad! I love living here, this city truly is amazing!
Ooh, Steph, colour me jealous. We were staying up at Mont Royal and Papineau-it was great. So much to see, I could have spent the entire time just in that area!
:)It does have its downfalls, I will admit but for the most part its pretty fabulous once you get accustomed to the many although somewhat irritating quirks. Mount Royal is beautiful, only been there a couple of times. I really need to get out more ha ha!
Yoko is the coolest. Up with Yoko!
Yoko really is so cool. It’s taken me a long time to wrap my head around it, and I might not be all the way there yet, but she’s something else.