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Published: June 29th 2009
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Bonjour! We have spent the past two days in Montreal and have really enjoyed our stay. We felt an immediate culture shock when we arrived. This massive, french speaking, classy dressed city is so different from the small, laid back, casually dressed towns that we've camped in and visited the past week. We walked around town and visited the underground mall (nothing too exciting). Apparently, there is going to be an international jazz festival beginning here in a few days. The city is busy setting up for the event. Looks like it's going to be fun! Our hotel here, Le Relais Lyonnais, is fabulous. There are only seven rooms in the entire hotel. We have a suitte on the third floor with a balcony overlooking the Latin Quarter. We have so much fun sitting out there, people watching. There's so much going on below us. Most of the buildings on our street are quaint, little restaurants with outdoor seating and the rest are shops. Last night, we did walk to Old Montreal for dinner. We had a table next to the window and the girls were able to look out down on the street and watch the tourists walking by. After
dinner, we did some shopping and then the girls had a characture drawn of them. Maddie swore that she looked cuter than Julia in the picture. Big sisters can be so mean! We stumbled across the Basilique Notre-Dame of Montreal and decided to go in. Little did we know that they were having a light show inside depicting the history of the church. At the end of the show, the entire cathedral was lit up and the large, pipe organ played behind us. Needless to say, I had goosebumps because it was so spectacular! I took pictures for the blog , but I'm sure that they don't do Notre-Dame justice. We finished off the night with fireworks over the St. Lawerence River and then walked back to our hotel. Julia fell asleep while riding home on Tony's shoulders. It was a wonderful in the big city!
This morning, we had breakfast at McDs (the girls were so happy!) and then walked to the port where we went through a labyrinth inside of an old warehouse. They said that it typically takes an hour to finish it. They weren't kidding! The kids had a blast and Tony and I were
so worried that we were going to lose one of them! It was really challenging! Afterwards, we walked over to the Cirqu De Solei tent, decided that we probably shouldn't buy tickets, and then walked to an outside restaurant for lunch in Old Montreal. After lunch, we let the girls eat some sorbet (they also served gourmet cupcakes there - how evil!) and then we walked to the Metro. The Metro is Montreal's subway system. We had plans to take the Metro to another part of town that had a historic village with a silversmith. The only problem was that we had lost the brochure and weren't exactly sure of where we needed to go. We decided to go for it anyway so that the girls would be able to experience riding on the subway. The girls ended up LOVING the Metro, but we were completely lost when we got off the Metro, so we just took it back to our hotel. What an experience! After resting in our room for a while (AKA giving the girls time to wrestle) we hopped in the bus and did some more sight seeing. We drove to Olympic Park and then to Mt.
Royal - the highest point in Montreal. We were able to see the entire city below us and then do a small hike around the top. There was also a park close by (think of Central Park in NYC). There were literally hundreds of people having picnics, playing games and listening to live performances on the lawn. We didn't stay, but it was an amazing sight to behold. Tony also found a white Westafalia camper bus on the road. We tried catching up with it, but didn't have much luck! We ended the night eating at the Three Amigos restaurant in the Latin Quarter. Tony then took Julia to McDs for chicken and fries because she didn't like her dinner and Maddie and I stopped for chocolate fondue for two! Delicious!
Our plan is to start driving home tomorrow morning after breakfast. We had tossed around the idea of driving to Quebec City tomorrow and staying an extra day, but I think that we're all ready to go home. The girls miss Daisy and Tony and I can't keep eating and drinking like this! I will blog again when we return home and will give a wrap up of
the entire trip! Say a prayer that our little, orange lunch box gets us home safe and sound!
See you in Fairfield, Ohio! Au Reviour!
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