101 Things to do in 1001 Days – Exploring Montreal

Bonsoir! Comment vas-tu? I’m working my way thru my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days and I recently had the opportunity to check the city of Montreal off of my list. I went 2 weeks ago with some friends and I loved it so much I’m already looking into my next visit!

The drive up took about 7 hours from NYC, which isn’t’ bad considering I’ve driven much farther than that before. We had a late arrival into the city, checked in to out hotel at Le Westin, and grab a late night bite to eat. The weather was similar to that in NYC, which I was thankful for, because the week prior to our arrival the temperature would drop to -5 degrees in the evening :( and I almost considered cancelling the trip.

We stayed in Old Montreal – I loved the architecture and the feel of city, and ventured out to Chinatown, the infamous St. Catherine Street for shopping (which is very similar to shopping on 5th Ave in NYC), visited the Montreal Science Center, La Basilique Notre-Dame (The Notre-Dame Basilica) – breathtaking, and the Musee des beaux-arts (Museum of Fine Arts) – reminded me of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC because of its size.

My fondest memories from the trip are visiting the La Basilique Notre-Dame and walking around old Montreal. The trip was very relaxing because we just took each day in stride… Simply getting up and heading out to explore the city at a relaxing pace, which was pretty easy to do since there weren’t very many tourists around.

Since we visited during St. Patty’s Day we couldn’t pass up a chance to try some yummy treats :) We stopped into a cupcake shop and tried the green velvet cupcakes and the Irish Car Bomb cupcakes.

Green Velvet

Irish Car Bomb

Then we stopped at a local pub and ordered some burgers and finished them off with beers from a local brewery. I tried the veggie burger with arugula, grilled portobello mushrooms and sweet potato fries, and couldn’t even imagine finishing the whole thing it was so big – but tasty.

Meanwhile, my friends had the Sicilian Burger and the Deuce Burger. There was a guy sitting at the table sitting next to us who had a burger that was stacked higher than the Deuce Burger (I wanted to take a picture, but opted against interrupting him during his lunch) and he finished the whole thing!

We only spent 3 days and 2 nights in the city but because we took it as such a slow pace time seemed to stand still as we took it all in. We walked the city during the day and took cabs from our hotel in the evening to check out the local bar and club scene.

This summer, I’m hoping to roadtrip up there again to check out a festival. I’m trying to decide between the…

Montreal Beer Festival – the city is well known for its craft beers and has over 600 types of beer available for people to sample. I sampled a few beers while I was there and my favorite was the Blonde De Chambly – a wheat beer, or white beer in the Belgian tradition. It’s citrusy and spicy, with hints of orange and coriander with 5 percent alcohol.

Montreal International Jazz Festival – One of the world’s largest Jazz festivals…will be celebrating 33 years this summer. Festival legends include B.B King, Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Brubeck, and Oscar Peterson.

Or…

Montreal International Reggae Festival – the largest outdoor 2-day Reggae festival held in Canada

Which ever I finally decide on I plan to have improved on my conversational French by the next trip. I can read French fairly well, but I haven’t practiced speaking it in so long that I’ve lost it. Locals speak both French and English, but I’d like to be able to converse with people in French if I can, plus this puts me one step closer to becoming fluent in French and crossing that off of my list of things to do as well.

Check out more pics from my trip: