Holiday to Canada in Aug 2024: Day 5 – Brockville to Montreal

Even though I was up early again this morning, I did go back to bed and back to sleep. Consequently, I felt a little more rested when we got up around 6am.

To get our day off to a great start, we drove out to a local Starbucks for a caffeine top up. Vick was so hungry that she had to enjoy some egg bites.

We enjoyed spending a bit of time in a Starbucks store first thing in the morning, but we took the opportunity of getting back to the hotel, so that we could pack up and get ready for our trip to Montreal.

We were back on the road around 8am and we took our normal approach: we set our sat nav to a location about an hour away, where there was a Starbucks and a supercharger close together.

In this case, it was a little place called Cornwall!

The drive was fine; nothing much to report. The weather continued to be dry and warm, which was more than appreciated!

At the Starbucks in Cornwall, breakfast was purchased, which we enjoyed whilst sat charging up.

I had a double bacon and cheese sandwich, and Vick had her second portion of egg bites of the day.

Charging back up to full took about 40 mins and the final stretch of driving took about 90 mins.

The final 10km or so was fairly slow due to driving into the centre of Montreal.

We drove straight into the hotel’s underground car park, which was really easy, although we would end up paying $30 per night for that privilege.

We didn’t hold out too much hope that our suite would be available when we arrived, but we got lucky on this occasion.

The check in team looked after both the Homewood Suites and the Hampton Inn, located in the same building.

The check in rep was really friendly and was happy to talk to us in English, rather than French.

Room 1203 was a corner suite and was very well appointed. The bedroom had a full window with a view of Montreal.

After settling in, we decided to head out and have a look around the city.

First stop was a Ben & Jerry’s, primarily to see whether they had Strawberry Cheesecake in stock. They didn’t.

Our next stop was the Notre-Dame Basilica, which was the number one tourist attraction in Montreal.

As with most of these historic religious buildings, there was rennovation work underway. You could tell by the scaffolding on the outside of the building.

It wasn’t very busy: there was no queue to enter, which is always a bonus, but there was a fee to enter.

To pay for all of the rennovation work, visitors pay a fee of $16 to enter the Basilica.

Fair enough, the work needs to be paid for, and if tourists want to take photos of the impressive inside, then they should pay for that opportunity.

What didn’t seem quite right, is that anyone who wanted to light a candle, had to pay to do so.

The price varied from $2 to $10 depending on the location and size of the candle.

There were contactless payment devices next to the lighted candles.

It felt a bit like the Basilica was taking advantage, although I guess, someone has to pay for the candles.

Back to important matters at hand!

After finishing at the Basilica, we headed towards another Ben & Jerry’s store and they didn’t have strawberry cheesecake in stock either. Disappointed is an understatement.

We decided to head back to the hotel to chill.

On the way, we stopped off at a large supermarket so that we could save some cash and eat in for the next couple of nights.

The supermarket was poorly organised and similar foods were not always grouped together.

So it took us a while to find everything we wanted. As normal, I couldn’t find any chutney or branston pickle!

Dinner didn’t turn out that desirable as it happens. Cheese and biscuits are always dependendable.

But we bought a chicken Caesar salad mix, but it didn’t come with any Caesar salad dressing! That’s a key ingredient guys! So, that was relatively dry and tasteless.

The cocunut and lime cheesecake that we picked up was the highlight – very tasty!

We watched tennis from the US Open for most of the evening. It gave us the opportunity of chilling.

No specific plans for tomorrow, but no doubt it was going to start with a visit to Starbucks!

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