Hi friends, welcome back! 2022 was filled with lots of travels, and today I’m finally getting around to sharing part one of our long weekend in Montreal. Jon’s company’s headquarters is located in Montreal, so he goes up there at least once a year, but I’d never accompanied him until last summer. I didn’t do any real planning because our trip to Paris and London were so jampacked, and this trip was two weeks later, so we were just going to go with the flow. The only things on my list were exploring Old Town, climbing up to Mount Royal, and visiting the Botanical Gardens. I made it to all three and enjoyed the more leisurely pace of this trip.
In November of 2021 I booked Billy Joel concert tickets for a Friday night in June, and it just so happened to be the weekend we were heading to Montreal. We wanted to make the most of our weekend so we booked an 8 am Saturday morning flight.
We were pretty exhausted, but we survived. For some reason I felt like I had more energy in Paris after maybe two hours of sleep than four and a half hours of sleep in my own bed. The flight was a breeze and we were only in the air about forty minutes. We landed around 9:30 am, got through customs easily, and then checked into the boutique Hotel Monville. The room was very comfortable and chic, and the bed was one of the comfiest I’ve slept in.
It was a beautiful day so we decided to conquer Mount Royal. For sustenance we grabbed a bagel sandwich that wasn’t that great (there are debates that Montreal has better bagels than NYC but I’m not buying it) from La Fabrique and then headed to Mount Royal.
Mount Royal Park is Montreal’s version of Central Park and in fact, Fredrick Law Olmstead designed both parks. Mount Royal was inaugurated eighteen years after Central Park and is about a little over half the size of its southern counterpart. We didn’t explore much of the park, only climbed up to the Kondiaronk Belvedere lookout point, but you can bike, hike, picnic, skate, ski, and toboggan here depending on the season.
It was a hotter day than expected and I was wearing jeans, so walking up all the 256 stairs wasn’t super fun, but we made it to the top and took in the beautiful view of the city and St. Lawrence River! I loved the contrast of city with greenery.
To beat the heat, Jon and I stopped in the café for a refreshing lime slushie. I haven’t had something like this since I was a kid, but it was perfect for the heat and gave me some energy.
The stairs were so much easier going down!
After we got back, we freshened up, hung out with Jon’s coworkers, and then headed to a group dinner at Jellyfish. The dinner was family style and very fancy. Dinner started at 9pm, and Jon and I didn’t think we would be able to stay awake because we had been up since 5 am, but we had a lot of fun. It was dark, so I didn’t take many pictures, I only got this smores dessert. Dinner finished around midnight and we crashed hard when we got home!
Stay tuned for part two exploring the Old Town & Old Port.
