My Day in Montreal
I’m sitting in the airport in Montreal and thought I would share a bit about my day as we wait to board.
The reason it took sixteen calls to get a hotel room in Montreal last night, became apparent today after perusing the local media. Montreal’s 32nd annual pride parade and NASCAR were both big events happening this weekend.
By the time we got up, had breakfast and resolved to start the day, we had left ourselves about nine hours to take in what little part of a city you can with that little time.
We took a walk in the area around the hotel before heading downtown to the old part of the city where we spent the remainder of the day.
After wandering around on foot for a while, we decided to take a carriage ride of old Montreal and learned quite a bit along the way. We decided to walk back along some of the streets we had just visited, popping in and out of a number of art galleries and gazing at the beautiful buildings and architecture.
We missed out on a tour of the Notre-Dame Basilica, but we did get the chance to take in part of a free classical music concert at the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel. This church is more than 300 years old and proved to be a nice place to take in some history and relaxing music, while getting off of our feet for a bit.
The carriage driver had mentioned Gibby’s was an excellent place for dinner in Old Montreal and we opted to check it out for ourselves. Everything about it was excellent. The building itself is a well-kept, two hundred year old stone building oozing ambiance; the staff were great and the meal itself was prepared to a very high quality.
There were a number of nice touches that stood out including the scoop of lemon sorbet the waiter brought by between the salad and the main course, and the chocolates he brought by with the coffee and tea after the meal that are moulded with the restaurant’s logo.
I am really happy I got the opportunity to get away, even just for a day, and am leaving with two thoughts: first, I want to come back and spend more time in Montreal and second, the concept of day trips (ideally much closer to home) are a good idea that I should look into doing more often because it was a nice way to relax and recharge before the work week kicks off again tomorrow.
I will update this when I get back to Toronto to include a couple of the pictures I took today.
Tags: Montreal, Montreal Day Trip, Old Montreal, Personal Reflection
Leave a Reply