A 3-day Trek to Montreal...

I recently bought a Groupon for a 2-night stay at the Marriott in Old Montreal so we decided to go there for a 3-day trip with a few friends after the New Year. 

Montreal is Canada's 2nd largest city and considered by many to be Canada's cultural centre. Located in the French-speaking province of Quebec, the city is famous for its smoked meats, poutine, and cultural events like the Just-for-laughs festival.  It's a city that has much to offer and has something for everyone: from food to culture to arts to shopping :)

Day 1

The hotel was centrally located and it was quite convenient for us to get around the city and explore by foot. Montreal has an amazing transit system and it was quite easy to find our way around town without a car.

A few from the hotel during sunset

We lived two blocks away from the famous Notre Dame cathedral and that was the first stop of the night. 

I love how everything was beautifully lighted

 Old Montreal has an old-world charm feel and visiting in the winter is very different from the summer. For one thing, everything is beautifully-lit and the snow makes it more romantic. Unfortunately, Montreal gets quite cold in the winter time and they just had a record-dumping of snow at the time. So walking around the city wasn't as nice as it could've been.

I'm a sucker for these pretty-old-world-lamposts...

 We passed by Chinatown on our way to get poutine and I must say that their Chinatown is very different from the Toronto one. It's much more pedestrian friendly and has a higher-density of stores.

Even Chinatown lights up at night...

 Apparently wherever you have Chinese  people, you will have bubble tea...

The next stop on our trip was to get poutine for dinner. Poutine if you're not familiar is a French-Canadian dish made of fries, gravy and cheese curds. Its best when the cheese curds are fresh and Montreal is famous for their poutine. 

We finally made it to the poutine place after walking for 30+ minutes in -20C cold and waiting outside for another 20 minutes! The poutine was the best I've ever had and I would definitely go back for more.  The place we went to was called "Poutine La Banquise" and you can check out their website here.  The portion size was quite generous and everyone in our group was satisfied with the regular size. 

Annie's "T-Rex" poutine with all the meat fillings... definitely worth a try...

In general, I feel like the Quebecois are more supportive of the arts then the English and we definitely saw that during our trip. On our way back from the hotel, we saw many outdoor art display that you would never see in Toronto.

A street filled with lanterns in trees...

 We ended up getting advice from a local to visit Place d'Arts, another external art display.

Place d'Arts

 This particular display celebrated Quebec's steelwork industry and as you walked under the frames, it was motion-activated to play sounds as you walked by.

The frames got smaller and smaller as you kept going down the tunnel.

We passed by the Montreal Underground City as we trekked back to the hotel and even the underground mall was quite impressive...

The view of Old Montreal at night is spectacular and very romantic.

Notre Dame at night

Day 2 + 3 

The next day, we wanted to try smoked meat in Montreal and we decided to go to the famous Schwartz's and try their traditional smoked meat.

Maybe it's just me, but I actually preferred the version of smoked meat I had in Toronto, the version from Schwartz' was a bit dry for my liking. The two things I recommend at Schwartz are having the steak( really juicy and flavourful)  and trying the smoked meat with their black cherry soda. I'm not a fan of black cherry soda or even cherry soda but in this case the black cherry soda made the meat less dry and brought out additional flavours in the sandwich.

Smoked meat...noms...

After lunch we went to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the lineup was out the door to get into the museum. The freakiest part was that most of the people were in line to see the paid exhibition when most of the museum was free of charge to enter.

The line stayed like this for the 4 hours we were in the museum...

They had quite a few interesting pieces and the collection was really comprehensive. I think the best part about the museum was that they explained each art genre's era, significance and points of interest.

I love pretty things...

 At night, we trekked over to St. Joseph's Oratory, the largest church in Canada.

This was my second time at the church and it's definitely a place to see at night since you get quite a nice view at the top of the church. Though a word of warning, it's a lot of stairs to the top and not for the unfit or faint of heart. Also, it's best to come in the summer time since the highest section of the church was closed due to the snow.

Funny story of how I discovered this place... it was the summer of '09 and I was in Montreal with my canoe buddies exploring the city at night. We were staying at a residence near by and saw the lighted cross from afar. We decided to follow the cross and eventually stumbled onto the grounds of St. Joseph's Oratory.

An area inside the church...

On our last day we decided to go to the Redpath Museum at McGill University. It's a small museum and perfect to spend our last few hours in Montreal.

A view inside the museum...

By the way, all the museums mentioned were free of admission charges! Have a good week everyone :D.