Montreal, Part 1

A few weeks ago we were in New York and for some reason everyone thought Mark was French.  So we decided to take a trip to French Canada.  As we began our journey, we stopped for the night in Cornwall, Ontario.  Here is Mark on the banks of the St. Lawrence River in Cornwall:

Our journey next brought us to the largest IKEA in North America, just outside of Montreal.  We had some Swedish meatballs and bought some cutting boards.  Yes, we walked around the entire store and came out with only cutting boards.  

Finally, we arrived in Old Montreal on Friday and stopped for a drink at Jardin Nelson.  This is our favorite little restaurant on Place Jacques-Cartier, which is a very European feeling public square in the old city.  

We walked around the old city a bit, exploring the area.  We had some mussels and frites for an appetizer before deciding on Stash Cafe, a Polish restaurant, for dinner.  It was yummy!

Here is the famous Montreal version of Notre Dame:

On Saturday, we started our day on the hunt for food.  We ate at this really cute little French place, where we both had the croque monsieur.  

We then wandered up to the Plateau Mont Royal neighborhood to seek out some CD stores for Mark. He only found one CD he wanted but he was very happy to find that one of the stores had some Styx vinyl in the front window.  

It was time for our next snack (yes, all we do is eat; Mark:  Mostly cereal...non-stop cereal for Kark) so we found this cool place that has thirty different types of poutine.  Traditional poutine is french fries with gravy and cheese curds.  The thirty varieties at this restaurant add additional toppings to the traditional.  We chose La Taquise (guacamole, sour cream, and tomatoes).  It was a perfect snack but unfortunately the AC sucked at this place and we were already hot from walking around (Mark:  that is NOT me standing in front of the restaurant).  

We found the cutest little bed & breakfast you ever did see.  Next trip, maybe?

We had dinner at Les Pyrenees, a Spanish place we had been to the last time we were here.  After dinner we walked around some more.  It was very busy in Old Montreal because it was the last night of the International fireworks competition and the Old Port has a view of the fireworks.  We stopped for a few minutes to see how this parking standoff would end.  The car on the right won and everyone applauded!  

We watched the fireworks.  I didn't get any good pictures so I'll show you this bad picture:

On Sunday, we decided to do one of those hop-on, hop-off bus tours.  We stopped at the Gay Village to see what this area of the city was like.  Yes, it's really called the Gay Village.  

This area is basically a long street of restaurants and bars, with a few stores sprinkled in.  These pink balls go up and down the entire strip.  There wasn't much going on there late morning on a Sunday but there were tons of people just walking up and down the street.  After seeing a man with no shirt on and cuts all over his back, walking along sort of limping and dragging one of his feet, coughing and clearing his throat, we renamed this Zombie Village.  I'm pretty convinced he was actually a zombie and we probably should have taken his picture.  Not to alert the authorities or anything like that...just to have for the blog.  

We took the bus over to the art museum/downtown area.  Here's Mark outside of the Fine Arts Museum.  

Time for food again!  Nobody can accuse me of not letting Mark eat on this trip.  We had lunch at the Deville Diner Bar.  Mark liked his hamburger so much he took a picture of it.  I'm still having regrets about not getting the Toasted Marshmallow milkshake (vanilla ice cream, nutella, and marshmallows).  

A couple of other things we saw on the bus...

We came back to the hotel and rested a bit before heading out for the evening.  We went back to the Jardin Nelson for an appetizer.  We sat on the back garden patio this time, which was lovely.  They had a live jazz band playing.  We had dinner at a cute little spot in Old Montreal, where we each had the black cod.  It was great.  We then returned to the hotel, where we split the yummiest dessert - beignets filled with maple butter, vanilla ice cream with a hint of maple, and maple fudge.  We might have had it last night, too.  Might have...

Pigeon is here with us but he is being camera shy.  However, he was happy to find that pigeon does not seem to be on the menus at any of the restaurants.  Yay for Pigeon!