Sometimes there’s a stop on a trip where nothing seems to go quite right, and Montreal was that place for us. And, yet, Montreal is still probably the single city from our Canadian Cities itinerary that I’d be quickest to return to, which I think is a testament to what a very cool city it is.
I was just outlining this post in my head, in fact, and thinking, “oh, come now–not THAT much went wrong,”…and realizing that there was at least something annoying that interfered with my carefully made plans every day we were there. But still we loved Montreal.
The problems began right away, as soon as we got to the Montreal South KOA: our surge protector kept giving us error messages, so we figured there was something wrong with the campground electricity. But the office sent someone out pretty quickly, and he immediately diagnosed the problem…which was that water was somehow getting inside our surge protector, so it wasn’t working correctly. Sorry to falsely accuse you, Montreal South KOA! Your electricity is perfect! Also shout out to Progressive Industries, who make our surge protector; they have a lifetime warranty, and they honored it no problem–I filled out the form while we were at this campground and I think we had a new surge protector waiting for us when we got home or shortly after at least.
So we had been planning to check out the Exporail train museum that was just about 10 minutes from the campground since this had been another short travel day from Ottawa, but by the time we dealt with the electrical issue it was getting to be too late and we just hung out at the campground instead. Anyway, I hear good things. You should go if you’re not having surge protector issues!
I’ll talk in more detail about various ways of getting into the city from the campground in my upcoming campground review, but basically, we were big fans of Montreal’s public transportation options and not nearly so keen on driving in Montreal. Our first full day in Montreal was a Sunday, and we were able to park for free at the brand new REM (light rail) station about 15 minutes from the campground and take the lovely, sparkling clean and brand new, train into the city. It’s a really nice ride with great views of the city as you approach.
Our plan for this morning was to do another Adventure City Games since we’d had good experiences with them in Ottawa and Toronto. But the one we tried in Montreal was sort of…wonky. The clues were harder to follow, it was taking forever, and we got frustrated pretty early on and gave up (thwarted plan #2 for those keeping track). We did get to see some cool public art and this fun rainbow building before we called it quits, though.
And also a defaced Queen Victoria monument:
We regrouped and headed to Maggie Oakes for brunch in Old Montreal. Old Montreal is a charming (and touristy) area of the city, with old buildings and cobblestones and street performers. And brunch! Which was very good; we sat outside on the patio, which was great for atmosphere and people watching.
A note on French: Montreal was our first stop in Quebec (although we had spent a morning in Quebec, across the river from Ottawa, at the Canadian history museum), and my first time (and Dave’s first time as an adult) traveling somewhere where English isn’t the most common language. I studied Spanish in high school and college and know virtually no French. We did some Duo Lingo and some podcast listening to get a few basics in (more on that when we get to our Quebec City campground), but that’s it. This was never an issue in the places we went in Quebec (which is to say, Montreal and Quebec City). We were mostly in fairly touristy areas and people working in museums and restaurants and the like were pretty much always bilingual (in general, we found younger people much more likely to be bilingual both in Ontario and Quebec). We used our very limited French when we could (please and thank you and such), and it generally seemed to be appreciated and encouraged. Things probably would have been different had we ventured out of the cities more. Signs in museums were always in French and English (with the French always in bigger font, which apparently is legally required). The biggest communication issue we ran into is when Abe spotted a beagle and tried to ask its people if he could pet it. It quickly became clear that they didn’t understand any English, but he managed to get his question across with sign language (and maybe a couple of words of French?) and he got to pet the dog. Phew! Later we looked up how to ask to pet dogs in French, just in case it came up again, and learned that the French word for pet is “caresser” which is kind of charming. ANYWAY. There’s a lot of contentious history about the French/English thing in Quebec, but in our experience everyone is super friendly to English-speaking tourists.
After brunch we walked over to Pointe-À-Callière, Montreal’s archaeology and history museum. I had very high hopes for this place ever since I first read about it years ago, and it did not disappoint. I loved this museum!
It’s built on the site of the original settlement of Montreal, and you get to walk around in the actual archaeological site and see the remains of the original streets and buildings. Going back through my notes and pictures I’m remembering just how much there is to see there; like…if all you got to do was walk through really old sewers, I would already be impressed! But there is so much more!
First up there’s a really well done movie about the history and culture of Montreal (there are headsets, and you can pick French or English), complete with Leonard Cohen music (because he was from Montreal). Then you go down in the elevator to wander around in the ruins:
You can see and learn about and walk right over the site of the site where the city was founded, Ville-Marie (a settlement originally founded as a mission center to convert Indigenous people to Christianity):
You get here by walking through the aforementioned old sewer. This was very exciting to me, someone who really wants to do the sewer tour in Paris and pretend like I’m in Les Miserables. I was pretty much in full on history nerd mode all day here:
Old plates! But with purple lights!
Then there are MORE really old streets and stuff:
And THEN! Pirates! “Come Aboard! Pirates or Privateers?” is a permanent exhibit that’s aimed at kids, but I, a grown adult, loved it. There’s a pirate ship to go on! And talking portraits! and, you know, also you actually learn stuff about the lives of pirates and privateers and how they’re different and stuff.
There’s an interactive area where these fun history people actually talk to you and answer questions. It’s like Turtle Talk with Crush, only history. I don’t even know how it works!
There’s another very hands-on area for kids about archaeology:
Also, of course, a gift shop (which I mention purely as an excuse to post this picture :
And then we could have been finished, but instead we went up in the tower for great views of the city.
In the other direction you can see Habitat 67 across the water. Habitat 67 is an experimental apartment complex designed for the 1967 World’s Fair. There are guided tours available, but they were all sold out by the time I thought to look for them, so this is as close as we got.
We started our second full day in Montreal by attempting to drive in the city…to the Jardin Botantique/Botanical Garden. Driving there was fine. It took us about half an hour, and there was plenty of paid parking at the Botanical Garden. I’ll go ahead and tell you that driving back was ridiculous…so much traffic, so many lights, so much stopping and going…it took us over an hour. I don’t seem to have put down the time in my notes, even though that would have been super helpful….I’m pretty sure we tried to leave before the height of rush hour, but…who knows? This area would have been a bit of a pain to reach on public transportation, I believe, hence the driving…but we would have been better off taking public transportation anyway, in retrospect.
But! The gardens! Were very cool and extensive. I liked them a lot, but they couldn’t compete in August’s heart with the Royal Botanical Gardens from earlier in the trip. There were a lot of different areas themed to different countries. I’ll mostly just let the pictures do the talking here, but I’ll say that my favorite area might have been the alpine garden that we didn’t make it to until the very end, when we had to rush through it. I love a good alpine garden! I’m like Heidi. Or maybe Maria from The Sound of Music.
Cheerfully posing with a lion:
Dave and Abe are always eager to look at a map:
We really liked the bonsai exhibit; there were signs telling how old each tree was:
I always expect taking pictures of koi to be more gratifying than it actually is. They look better in real life!
I think this is the Alpine garden, with the Montreal Tower from the Olympics in the background. This tower was closed while we were there, but I just checked, and it’s supposed to reopen in 2027 (with a funicular inside so you can go up to the top):
The Chinese Garden is big spot for pictures, so we took a lot:
We found out about this wood joinery class (I can’t remember what it was called now, but it was about wood joinery in China specifically somehow or other) the night before on the website, and Dave was very excited about it (he loves joinery!)…and then a little sheepish when we got there, and he realized he was the only adult participating. Abe did it with him so it wasn’t TOO weird. Incidentally, the woman running the program was bilingual and said everything in English and French, but I think the availability of English for these programs just depends on who’s doing them that day.
After our traffic-intensive drive back to the campground, we headed out again that evening, this time on the train, with the goal of seeing Aura–“an immersive light experience”–at the Notre Dame Basilica. This seemed like a cool way to see the Basilica, and probably it is. Unfortunately, after we had been standing in line to get in for awhile, we started noticing a lot of…activity up at the front of the line. A guy (not the kind of guy who works at the Basilica) walked by telling everyone the show was canceled. At first we thought it was a joke–like he was trying to get everyone to leave the line so he wouldn’t have to wait so long…but no! The show was canceled. Because there was some kind of fire or worry about a fire or something in the area and the power was out all over.
So that was a bummer (and a new thing that went wrong in Montreal)
We thought maybe we could salvage the evening by walking around in Old Montreal and getting some ice cream…but all the ice cream places were closed because of the power outage. So we walked around a little and then just headed back to the train. OH WELL.
We were able to get a refund no problem, and then we tried again the next day…only during the day without a fun light show. So Notre Dame is very cool even without lights and music (I would probably go as far as to say it’d be worth it to do both a regular daytime ticket AND see Aura at night…with the caveat that I haven’t actually seen Aura). Adult tickets are $17 CAD, and you pretty much just walk around and gawk at how cool everything is for awhile (there are some interpretive panels, but it’s a self-guided tour). It was also very crowded, so be prepared for that.
I think cathedrals are pretty much always under construction in one way or another:
Next up we headed toward the Museum of Fine Arts, stopping on the way to eat at Burger Bar Crescent, with a view of this Leonard Cohen portrait:
The art museum is a big, sprawling complex with multiple buildings and we managed to get lost a couple of times. We also managed to get scolded a couple of times. We have a reciprocal membership, but the woman at the front desk wasn’t happy because my name was on it but not Dave’s or something? Anyway, she eventually let us in. But then later on Dave and Abe were reprimanded by a guard for talking too loud. I don’t think they were being that loud. Anyway, we weren’t really sure where to start here, so we ended up seeing some general art room near the entrance before meandering through a Pop Art exhibit and then ending up at a special exhibit on Flemish art. 
These were the weirdest, hardest to walk down stairs ever:
This might be the cutest baby Jesus ever painted:
…and the most horrifyingly ugly squirrel ever painted:
Looking back, it seems like this was enough stuff for a day, and we probably should have quit while we were ahead. But I was fairly determined to make it to Mount Royal, the hilltop, Frederick Law Olmstead-designed park on the hill from which the city gets its name. But I found transportation options for getting there frustratingly hard to untangle. I was pretty sure I had figured out what bus we could take, though, and we tried to make our way to the bus stop we needed, via the subway. But when we got there there was confusing signage about a temporary change in the location, and then we somehow managed to wait for awhile on the wrong side of the street and figure it out only when the bus we needed was already pulling away from the correct location….basically, we spent a long time trying to get this bus only to decide it was getting too late and we needed to get back to the dogs and bailing on the plan. Maybe another time, Mount Royal!
And with that our complicated but fun time in Montreal came to an end and we were off to Quebec City!
maybe you would like to pin this?
Leave a Reply