36 hours in Montreal

Olympic Park, Montreal

After spending a few days in the wilderness we decided we were ready for some city time.  Montreal is the second largest city in Canada and the second largest French speaking city (after Paris) in the world, which is probably why it reminded us of a cross between Paris and San Francisco. One thing that was immediately obvious about Montreal was how bike friendly it was. Split bike lanes allowed you to safely navigate the whole city. Once we found a predictably overpriced parking spot for the van, we spent the rest of our 36 hours in Montreal exploring the city on bikes.

We went to Plateau Mont Royal neighborhood for a late lunch at Hachoir. This neighborhood was a trendy hipster neighborhood with lots of funky shops and restaurants, reminding us of the Mission in SF. Quite a contrast from our typical camping dinner of beans and quinoa!

Later that evening, we continued to explore Montreal on bikes. We biked by Notre Dame and the Old Port part of the city before stumbling upon the Juste Pour Rire (Just for Laughs) festival, which was essentially a comedy festival with music, stand up, and food carts! We sampled some of the food options, bought a bottle of wine and wandered around checking out some of the shows. Seth Myers from SNL was hosting a VIP event at the festival which unfortunately required tickets. They were simulcasting the standup outside though, so we enjoyed some top notch comedy (which mainly consisted of Americans making fun of Canadians) while drinking wine.

The only food cart necessary

An acapella group performing at the Just For Laughs Festival

 The next day we spend another full day  exploring Montreal by bike. We checked out the Olympic Park and the Jardin Botanique de Montreal (botanical gardens). The botanical gardens in Montreal are huge! We easily could have spent an entire day there. The landscaping ranged from extremely manicured (some very impressive hedge art) to natural and wild (we even saw a fox sunning himself!).

Chinese Gardens

Just one of the many topiary experiments

A fox enjoying a sunny day in the gardens

After the botanical gardens we biked over to check out the Marche Jean-Talon, a huge outdoor food market. This market was a food lovers paradise and we were immediately overwhelmed. Highlights included the William J Walter "Saucissier", a sausage store that had over 50 different types of sausage (the cheese infused sausage was amazing!). We ended up leaving empty handed but we came back with the van on our way out of town so we could properly load up with supplies.

mmmmm oysters

After a long day biking around in Montreal we drove off towards the border and ended up getting a motel about 15 miles from the Canada-Vermont border. One last night in Canada before returning to the States.