Montreal

Montreal Day 4 and The Video Wrap Up

January 13, 2011

Monday 1.3.11

It’s quite astonishing to compare the first day our our trip with our last. Price and I realized that by the time we were leaving Montreal on Monday that we had already been to King Arthur Flour Cafe and Shop in VT and crossed into Canada on Friday.

We leasurly got up, had coffee, checked out and packed up the car before we headed back to Fairmont Bagels to get breakfast there. Even Brioche, my version of a traveling gnome, enjoyed in the fun of enjoying these crunchy, chewy bagels.

Beware of crashing road signs!!!

While in Vermont we stopped off at Park Row Cafe in Waterbury, Vermont for lunch. I highly recommend this place because the sandwiches, soup, and dessert we shared were fantastic. I had a turkey sandwich with provolone, mayo, lettuce, and sprouts. All of that on freshly baked whole wheat bread. Price had a BLT and a cup of cream of brocoli soup, which I tried for the first time ever and loved. Then we split a no bake chocolate peatnut butter oat cookie.

Price was amazing and drove the whole way back! I fell asleep after lunch and he did not wake me up where we had discussed switching. When I did wake up he told me not to worry about it and just to back to sleep. Amazing. 🙂

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Lastly, here is our weekend in less than 1 minute.

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Montreal Day 3 {Our Anniversary}

January 9, 2011

Sunday 1.2.11

Day 3 of our Montreal vacation marked our 6th year anniversary.

While we were enjoying the Polar Spheres on New Years Eve, I saw a restaurant called Eggspectations. I thought it would be a great place for us to brunch on our anniversary since it would be nicer than standing in the street eating bagels, see Day 2 post. Plus I can’t resist a place that has several kinds of eggs benedict.

We then hit up the Underground City, La Ville Souterraine, to check it out and work off breakfast. It was less excitng than we thought it was going to be, since it was just a mall and tunnels.

However, we got lost, a lot. Obviously, we understand how to read plans, but the maps we had were simple and when your in the space it is not intuitive because you can’t just cross the space to get into another tunnel, but you had to go up or down a level to do so. Either way we walked miles. I played around with google’s pedometer and figured out were were up in the 12+ mile range for the day.

After miles of tunnels we emerged to check out Old Montreal for the last time. We got to see Borsecour Market, which contained a few restaurants and several gallery like stores. We loved Montreal Poutine so much that we went back for our last poutine and real meal in Montreal.

After walking so many miles, we decided that taking a cab back to the hotel was necessary. Such a great decision. We were both so tired that we just relaxed and watched the news in French. I still have no idea what we were watching but it didn’t it matter. We started to get hungry for dinner around 8 so I called down for some room service but the ktichen was closed… why?… “because of the holiday”. What holiday!?! New Years was the day before! The front desk said we could come down to look at some delivery menus, but I didn’t even have the energy for that so we had a bag of all dressed potato chips for dinner instead.

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Montreal Day 2 {New Years Day}

January 7, 2011

Saturday 1.1.11

I don’t suggest people to go to Montreal to celebrate New Years if you don’t plan on nursing a hangover on New Years Day. Why? We discovered this laid back city took the day off. There were a lot of things closed from museums, shops, and restaurants all over the city. It was nice to have such a laid back day but Price and I are used to conquering a city and walking all over. We still walked all over but without any real place to go. So I’d suggest going to visit Montreal another time because this city has a lot to see and do, you definitely don’t want it closed.

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we planned on getting bagels for breakfast so after sleeping in and having some coffee we headed out to get bagels. Since I did not sign up for an international plan for the weekend, we only had wi-fi at the hotel which ment we had to relay on the maps in the guide books to get there. That would not have been so bad had I not gotten us off the wrong subway stop and made things confusing.

But the extra walk to Fairmont Bagels was really worth it since they were fantastic bagels. I got everything bagels, which they called “All Dressed” and Price got poppy.

We walked back to the subway to head towards the underground mall. while asking for directions we were informed it was closed because it is new years day. WTF? sersiously??? At this point I don’t know if that was true, but we listened to her anyway and went back to Old Town Montreal to wander around. It was then that we learned how Montreal deals with snow… they don’t. They just let it be and block your way from using snow covered stairs.

We wandered over to Bonsecours Market, but it was closed. I really could not understand how so many shops were closed on a day where there were so many people walking around.

So we continued on to the St. Lawrence River to see across to the Biosphere and to see the ice skaters on the Bonsecours Basin skating rink.

It started to drizzle again and it was mid afternoon so we headed over to Chez Suzette for lunch of fondue. Skip the bloody mary’s there, too watered down.

And then a dessert crepe and some after dinner coffee drinks that were 10% coffee and 90% alcohol. Holy hell that was a lot of sambuca.

After lunch we walked back to the hotel where Price napped and I watched a Sister Wives marathon. Oh the madness! I was addicted. Price practically had to drag me away to get to have $10 filet mignon at Brochette, a 24-hour grill place that is attached to a shut down body shop down the road. I enjoyed a filet kabob and Price had a grilled chicken pita. Pretty good for a $10.80 filet dinner 🙂 I should have taken a photo but it was a kinda place where you just don’t do that.

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Montreal Day 1 {New Years Eve}

January 6, 2011

Friday 12.31.10

Price and I were up at 4.30am and were done with out trip to Dunkin’s by 5.30 to get on the road quickly. It was beautiful to see the sun rising over the Mts in New Hampshire.

We made a stop for breakfast at King Arthur Baker’s Shop and Cafe (previously posted)

We continued our trip on ward and upward through VT into Canada reaching Montreal around 11.30

We were told that ‘typically people check in at 3pm’ by the man at the hotel desk when we came in to see about early check in (no) and where to go next. So we walked down to Vieux-Montréal (Old Montreal) for some lunch and to check out the city.

We stopped off at Montreal Poutine, who I had been tweeting with before our trip, for some lunch. Besides the great meal there, we had beer called Unibroue. I had the Ephemere Blackcurrant and I really have to find that down in Boston now.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel, on the way I noticed a dress that lday gaga would love.. diaper dress!

Price and I got settled in our hotel room, took a nap, and then headed back out for dinner and to celebrate the New Year. On our way to dinner we saw a cool outdoor exhibit, called Polar Spheres, outside the Palace Des Arts.

We went to Basilic in Montreal’s China town. I got Bun, as usual.

As the New Year approached we headed down to the Port area to see the fireworks, but mother nature had other plans for us. It eneded up raining and we decided to bail on the fireworks. A quick walk out of Old Town and a cab ride later, we were back in the hotel drying off and watching the ball drop on TV. Still, a fantastic end to 2010.

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