Au revoir, Montréal
God, what a fantastic trip.
My whole family just returned from Montréal, Quebec in Canada. This was the first international vacation for our children, the first visit to Canada for Valerie and me, and the first international trip for Valerie and me since 20212. I’ve wanted to visit Canada for ages, and Montréal is not a terrible driving distance from Richmond, VA. And in my head this was sort of an “easy mode” version of international travel for our kids: Driving (split over two days in each direction), same time zone, a city where most shop and restaurant employees can speak English, and a (mostly) modern North American city. But! It was still a city where most people spoke (Canadian) French by default, where many menus and signs had no English alternative. With an old city core reminiscent of Western European towns.
And it really did work out that way. Travel was easy (for how long it was), the city was marvelous, and while we never had issues related to language differences, the kids found themselves reflexively saying “excusez-moi” instead of “excuse me” after hearing it all week. The kids still felt like they were outside the US, not simply in a different city.
But oh! What a city. I found Montréal beguiling, whether it was the old city, the outer neighborhoods (I could live somewhere around the plateau), the variety of excellent food and coffee, or the extraordinary bike infrastructure. I wish I had 4 weeks instead of 1 to explore the place.
The week was chock full of goodness, so I may need to break this into multiple parts.
The Way Up
Like I said, we tend to like splitting long drives over two days, so on the first day we stopped in Troy, NY outside of Albany. Even though it was a single night, Valerie is terrific at selecting hotels and we ended up on the east bank of the Hudson River. We were able to dine on the waterfront and have a lovely stroll back to the hotel afterward.
After some truly incredible coffee and service at Jacob Alejandro we continued north.
The border crossing at Champlain was easy enough, and the Canadian border agent was patient and kind enough to physically stamp our passports since it was the first time for the kids (and the adults wanted them, too!). We made an obligatory stop at Tim Hortons, and from what I understand there wouldn’t be too many Canadian defenders of the chain’s quality. I didn’t expect it to be any good. I just wanted to do something particularly Canadian shortly after entering Canada, so we got some Timmy’s.
Crossing Pont Champlain on our way into Pylon City had me singing “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” by my favorite Montréal band, Stars, until we hit the sort of multi-event traffic insanity that many locals assured us was fairly typical. In this case, however, we arrived right after the lunch hour on the final day of both Montréal Pride AND Otakuthon. As it happens, hour hotel was right near the convention center, so we could not actually reach the parking deck due to road closures. We needed a few hours of entertainment before checking in.
We decided to head out in the vicinity of C&L Cycles, a shop I’d been dying to visit after learning about it from Bike Breath. They have parts and goods from pretty much every cool alt cycling brand, they are the exclusive Canadian Rivendell dealer, and they also have a house brand (Bassi) with a lineup of fantastic steel bikes. My thinking was that a cool bike shop is probably in a cool neighborhood and, brother, that was an understatement.
Brief Aside about Mont Royal
C&L Cycles is on Rue Rachel in Montréal’s Mont Royal (Mont…réal?) neighborhood—not to be confused with actual Mont Royal within Mont Royal Park. This neighborhood could have been our entire vacation and we wouldn’t have been disappointed. So many great restaurants, cafes, beautiful parks, shops, and enough bike infrastructure to put my entire city’s paltry bike lanes to shame. I would go back to Montréal just to spend more time here.
ANYWAY…
We were fortunate enough to stumble into what turned out to be an excellent dumpling shop called Le Petit Coin Dumpling (chicken curry dumplings, I love you!), and some fantastic ice cream from Les Tropiques which we enjoyed in the lovely La Fontaine Park. When we wrapped up we were able to easily reach our hotel and check in.
We finished up the evening with some casual perambulating around Vieux-Montréal before collapsing into bed. The photo at the top of this post is from our room, an absolutely stellar find from my wife.
This has gone on entirely too long, so I think I’ll pick up with some more in (at least) another post. I just had to get something out though now that we’re home. I’ll be insufferable about how much I love Montréal to anybody who will listen for the next week at least.
