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.

Happy Birthday Chrissy! :)

Yesterday was the birthday of my very dear friend Christina and her family was kind enough to invite a few of her close friends over for a giant celebration dinner. They cooked so much food that I seriously thought it was Chinese New Year. 

A bit of background: Christina and I have been friends since grade 4 and she is definitely one of my best-est friends of all time. Growing up, she was the one that offered me a shoulder to cry on when I needed it and we try to see each other once a week ( if possible). Her family are just the nicest people in the world and I love coming over for dinner :D.

On this particular day, we had more then 10 dishes that was mostly a mix of vegetables and meat. We had some pure vegetarian dishes to accomodate her cousin's girlfriend who was a vegetarian. Here's a look at what we had last night:

Pre-cooked version. Christina's parents took some chopped pork and mixed it with mushroom and stuffed it in melons before steaming it.

What's a Chinese meal without some chicken wings? These were oven-baked and they were amazing!

Not too dry, and perfectly seasoned :)

 Her boyfriend was kind enough to grill ribs for everyone and they were amazing!

BBQ should be an all-season thing

 Here's the cooked version of the stuffed melons from above, don't they look good?

What's a chinese meal with out rice? Here's a picture of my bowl :)

          

Good thing they had a big dining table or else it wouldn't have fitted all 14 of us. Here's a view of the table with all the food :D

 

Annie and Janet chipped in to get Christina a strawberry Oreo ice cream cake from MarbleSlab.

Can you make out where her name was written?

 Extras:
 Christina's dad likes to collect antiques so there are some really fun pieces at her home.

An antique carriage set

Antique clock

This has been a very eventful and enjoyable week for me and I hope for you as well. Have a good week everyone!

Pumpkin Festival on Harbord

I got to go to a local Pumpkin Festival on Harbord Street this week, which is a small, mixed-use street between College and Bloor on the west side of Toronto. The neighbourhood business association held the Pumpkin Festival as a way to recycle pumpkins after Halloween and draw some new visitors to the area. Here are some of the highlights:

Nyannnn Cat pumpkin anyone?

Marilyn Monroe--Witch Style

 This is not a pumpkin but this dog was really cute when he posed for me ^^

One of the restaurants' on this street when all out in pumpkin carvings and decorations. They were amazing!

I believe the residents in the area carve them for Halloween and the community association picks them up on Nov.1st for display. It's a nice idea and great way to recycle your old pumpkins.

Charlie Brown!

 They even gave us free cake and hot apple cider! It was nice to have a warm drink on a chilly night ^^.

The Harbord Bakery was also kind enough to provide free cookies! I can definitely say I'll be coming back since the cookies were great

Extras:

On the night of Halloween itself, I went over to my friend's house to give out candy. But since it rained, no one came to the door. Her neighbours take Halloween very seriously and went all out in the decorations.

We ended up having hot chocolate with giant marshmallows in it, which was nice since it's been a while since we've spent time together.

Also, I walked by the Bay on Queen Street and looks like they've already put up their Christmas decorations!