Bonjour from Montreal! As opposed to quaint and old style European-esque Quebec City, Montreal is a large city with attractions sprawled out and homeless milling around. It’s also way more crowded than Quebec City. Everywhere was teeming with people.
From Quebec, we took VIA rail to Montreal’s central station. It was a comfortable 3 hr ride with plenty of leg room. There’s a designated area for large luggage and the small carry ons go in the overhead bins. And while VIA rail is proud to tout wifi availability, don’t count on it for work or streaming during the ride. It’s super slow…
Day 1: Mount Royal Park and Old Montreal
Transportation around Montreal is easy without a car. Just buy a weekend metro bus pass that is valid from 4PM Friday to Monday 5:30AM for $14.50 or a 3 day pass for $21 if you are not there during the weekend. There’s also single use passes for $3.50. All the metro stations have kiosks you can buy the tickets from.
We arrived into Montreal at 11:30AM and took the metro to St Denis street to indulge in a variety of french pastries. In this area off the Mont Royal Metro Station are several well known French pastry shops. We got pastries at Pâtisserie Kouign Amann and at Boulangerie Le Toledo.
We then took the bus to Mount Royal Park and hiked to Kondiaronk Belevedere for fantastic views of Montreal, and then hiked to Croix du Mont, a giant cross. There’s lots of tree lined hiking paths to enjoy an afternoon “stroll”. I say stroll but there’s a ton of STAIRS! So it wasn’t really a stroll for me. Ha ha
Fantastic view of Montreal from Mount Royal Park’s Kondiaronk Belvedere
Mount Royal Chalet
Saw this little guy on our hike to the cross. Is it a beaver, the Canadian National animal?
Mount Royal Cross
Next we took the metro to old Montreal and walked around. There’s a giant Ferris wheel, a church and clock tower honoring the sailors, zip lines, and lots of souvenir shops and restaurants and Bonsecours Market. Bonsecours Market was quite disappointing with mainly touristy shops. Savory crepes and smoked salmon salad at Creperie Chez Suzette in Old Montreal was also a bit disappointing. I’ve definitely had better crepes elsewhere. Dessert at Chat-colate in Old Montreal was cute, especially if you are a cat fan. We ended the day walking from Old Montreal to Place d’Armes Square, a historical landmark flanked by an old bank modeled after the Pantheon, one of the first skyscrapers in North America, and the Basilica. The square had street performers when we were there.
Notre Dame de Bon Secours Chapel: Built in 1771. Can you find the little ship hanging from the church ceiling?
Ferris Wheel and an obligatory photo spot for Montreal
Clock Tower built in 1919-1922 to memorialize sailors lost at sea. Walk behind the tower to see the inscription.
Old Montreal
Bank of Montreal: modeled after the Pantheon. At night there was a short film clip about the history of building in Montreal
Notre Dame Basilica at Night
Day 2: Basilica and Montreal Must Eats
On day 2, we walked to the Notre Dame basilica, one of the largest places of worship. It can fit 3200 worshipers! Designed by architect James O’Donnell in 1824, and built between 1824-1829, the church is massive. The place was crowded when we went at 9AM, but you could spend as long as you wanted to appreciate the fine details in the columns, pews, ceilings, and each of the chapels. There is also a light and music show in the evening, but after reading reviews about the aurora show, we opted to not do it.
After touring the basilica, we took the 55 bus, making stops at two smoked meat delis, a Montreal bagel shop, and the Jean Talon Market.
Inside Notre Dame Basilica: opens 9AM-4:30PM, $15pp, you can buy tickets there or order online. There are no longer any tours. Instead just pick up a brochure and do a self guided tour.
There was an organ tour, so we got to hear the experts play music as well as tour guests playing “Mary had a little lamb”.
The intricate wood work inside the basilica
Smoked meat sandwiches at the famous Schwartz’s Deli: Mounds of smoked brisket sliced and served on rye bread with a little bit of mustard. A must try when in Montreal
Montreal bagels at St. Viateur Bagels. Montreal bagels are sweeter, smaller, thinner and denser than New York style bagels. This is because it is boiled in honey water first and then cooked in a wood fire oven. Everyone raves about these, and no doubt, fresh from the oven, these are delicious. But if given the choice, we prefer the New York style bagels more.
Smoked meat sandwich from Lester’s Deli: also smoked brisket sliced and mounded high on rye bread with mustard, but the meat at Lester’s has a bouncier and softer texture than Schwartz’s. We liked the texture at Schwartz’s better, but if the line at Schwartz’s is too long, these will do.
Jean Talon Market was an impressive outdoor farmers market that reminded me of Barcelona’s La Boqueria. There was even a whole section that sold potted plants! It was fun to browse the stalls to find something yummy to eat.
Natas and canele at Jean Talon Market: just OK…I could tell these had been refrigerated so not fresh like what you would normally get directly from the bakery, so the texture of the crust wasn’t optimal.
We then took the Metro green line to McGill station to see La Foule Iluminee, and walked around the underground malls. Montreal has harsh winters, so they have a huge underground network of shops and food courts such that you could spend your entire day there without exposing yourself to the elements. It’s a neat concept for sure, but once inside, it felt like being in any other indoor mall. By the way, surpringly, the interconnecting corridors are not open during the weekends.
La Foule Iluminee (the illuminated crowd, 1985): sculpture by Raymond Mason an outdoor artwork of 65 resin people packed closely together. It’s an unusual art medium, and show cases the flow of man’s emotion through space—illumination, hope, involvement, hilarity, irritation, fear, illness, violence, murder, death.
We ended the day with a visit to Chinatown. (We originally wanted to have some patries and coffee at Crew Collective Cafe which is known for their cool architecture, but it was closed due to a private event.) The Montreal Chinatown is actually quite big and covers several blocks with tons of eateries and a few souvenir shops. Our friend recommended this handmade noodle place, known for their beef noodle soup, so we ate there for dinner. You have to wait in a long line, (at 6:15 on a Saturday, we waited about 30-40 min to get seated), but go early or risk running out of the beef noodle soup broth.
Dragon beards candy: I don’t see this sold often. Long long time ago they sold this at Koi Palace in Daly City, but no more…It’s cooked sugar that is pulled into a rope and folded over many times to make fine strands. They fill it with peanuts and the texture is like cotton candy, but with a chew to it. It’s really good and I got 3 boxes. Hopefully it will keep and won’t turn hard. It’s sensitive to humidity so I put in in a double ziplock. Let’s see when I get home. Just in case it turns bad, we scarfed down one box already!
Nouilles de Lan Zhou: known for their homemade noodles and beef soup. You can customize the noodle thickness from 1 to 7. This is thickness #6, and the noodle texture was definitely really really good. Soup was excellent too, so I can understand the long lines. We saw lots of people ordering the large beef noodle soup bowl which feeds two people, but we opted to get the small so we could also try the Dan Dan noodles. Not only were the noodles delicious, but it was our cheapest meal! Total with tax and tips were under $30 USD.
Day 3: Olympic Park and Botanical Gardens
On our last day in Montreal, we took the metro to Olympic park and the Botanical Gardens and spent a few hours there exploring and picnicking, and then ended the day back at Chinatown to try this other highly recommended restaurant. Honestly, originally I wanted to go to the botanical gardens because I saw all these pictures online of these giant living garden sculptures at the gardens, but unfortunately that exhibition is no longer there. That was way back in 2013! Nonetheless we still had an enjoyable time. That Sunday we were there, there was a taiko drumming performance at the Japanese garden.
Olympic Park: built for the 1976 Olympics and now used for stadium events. There’s not much to see here actually unless they have an event.
Montreal Botanical Garden: Chinese garden
Montreal Botanical Garden: Chinese garden
Montreal Botanical Garden: Chinese garden, I recognize all these herbs! That was the cool thing about this botanical garden. It’s not just small placards with names of each of the plants. There’s actually a lot of pavilions at each of the gardens that explain more in depth the culture and human ties with nature, or how bonsai are grown, etc. It’s almost like a museum plus botanical garden!
Montreal Botanical Garden: the greenhouse and explain action of how rice grows
Montreal Botanical Garden: greenhouse, an unusual orchid!
Chinatown Sammie’s Soup Dumplings: There’s a long line here too, but if you go early like we did at 4:30pm, there was no wait. The pork dumplings and shrimp and scallop dumplings, so good and plenty of soup. And the skins were just the right thickness and texture such that lifting the dumplings up didn’t cause leakage of all the soup into the steamer instead of your tummy. Yeah, you know that feeling when that happens!!!
Chinatown Sammie’s Soup Dumplings: pizza dumplings are a unique item here, but I prefer the soup dumplings. Hubby liked this dish though. It’s basically pan fried pork dumplings with a cheese crust and wasabi sriracha mayo.
There are two Chinese bakeries in Chinatown, Patisserie Harmonie and Patisserie Coco. Both had long lines and the day before we already got pastries from Coco to try, so today we stood in-line for Harmonie’s pastries. This is a custard filled fried mochi ball (it’s like a gin dui with custard instead of the bean paste and the mochi is a lot thicker). The Chinese donut on a stick looked good, but unfortunately it’s not the eggy Chinese donut. Tastes like a regular sugar donut…
