The Day We Toured Montreal

To start off our adventure in Montreal, we had breakfast at Chez Cora.  It was so amazing and so GIANT.  Brooke was thrilled with her waffle covered in fruit, chocolate and whipped cream.  Katelyn played it safe with cereal and fruit and I had a HUGE crepe stuffed full of fruit and chocolate.  Now that is what I call breakfast.  Notice the size of the crepe next to the big fork.  It was huge and although I didn’t finish it, there wasn’t much left.  Kyle and Carol had some equally yummy dishes but I definitely consumed the most chocolate before 9 a.m.  It was great!

Our next stop was the metro, for a train ride to the heart of the city.  Although we never saw Celine Dion, I am pretty sure we saw Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland’s character from “24”) as we were waiting to get on the Metro.  He was cleverly disguised as a homeless guy, but he was talking into his sleeve/wrist as if he was a spy so we decided it had to be him.  Montreal is a great place to people watch and we all loved hearing Kyle speak French.

Katelyn and Brooke also tried speaking French and became very adept at saying merci (thank-you), oui (yes) and bonjour (hello) to everyone for everything.  Thank goodness the locals thought it was charming.

We saw some wonderful sites in downtown Montreal, including a giant web of malls that are all connected underground.  The girls were very happy to find a Subway restaurant in one of the malls and requested that for lunch.  The nice little French girl behind the counter was surprised that we knew what Subway was and said “You have Subway in the US?”  Priceless.  I love foreigners.

The architecture was amazing and there were parts of the city that felt like we were in the heart of Paris.  One of our favorite finds was a bakery called Canadian Maple Delights.  They had a maple pastry dessert that is indescribable.   It was so good we even deviated from our departure plan the next morning so we could get another one when they opened.  It really was that good.

We also got to watch this fun street performer – he was very entertaining and the girls were happy to go put money in his hat at the end of the show.  About 5 hours later however, Brooke revealed a coin she’d been hanging onto… when we asked her where she got it, she emphatically answered, “I forgot… to put it… in…  the hat.”  At least she gave him the rest, right?

For dinner we enjoyed a great meal at a little bistro in the center of town.  I was happy to have a croque-monsieur and the girls loved the birds dinning on crumbs right around us.  Brooke wasn’t sure why the hostess got to be in the picture, but thank goodness she didn’t say anything to her.

 

After dinner we took a nice walk down to the water and got to take in more of the beautiful sites this amazing city has to offer.