Holiday to Canada in Aug 2024: Day 6 – Montreal

By Nige on septembre 5, 2024 at 8:30 pm
Type: Post
Story: Holiday to Canada in Aug 2024 Category: Travel
Tags: Canada | Hertz | Hilton | Holidays | Montreal

Finally starting to sleep a little longer – managed to stay in bed until 4:30am this morning. It wasn’t that much later before the Vickster got up.

As normal, our day started with a visit to the local Starbucks – there were a couple that opened at 6:30am, but the one we chose was a bugger to find.

There was a lot of construction work going on in Montreal. That appeared to be the case on the block in which the Starbucks was located.

We ended up walking up and down a number of stairs, which wasn’t good for Vick’s knee. No signs of course, but we stumbled across the store in the end.

Breakfast was free in the hotel and I was fine with what was on offer – I managed to get some cereal and some muffins with butter and grape jam.

Vick struggled – she wanted some oatmeal, but it was very watery, and was completely unappetizing. She ended up with gluten-free toast.

That didn’t get the day off to a great start, so most of the morning didn’t seem very positive, but we did some interesting touristy things in Montreal.

I think the key is that the further we are from food, the poorer our mood is!

Our sight seeing started with a drive to the Botanical Gardens.

It wasn’t very far, but a combination of traffic and constantly having to stop for traffic lights, made it feel like an age to reach the car park.

Finding the car park was difficult enough – no signs coming from our direction, but having driven around all sides of the Botanical Gardens, we stumbled across a car park we could use.

After paying $13.50 for parking and a further $40 to get in, we were expecting the bees-knees of garden-fare.

Unfortunately, it was a little disappointing. An hour later and we were heading towards our next tourist stop.

So, next stop was for Vick to play with the cats at the Cat Cafe.

I managed to find a parking space in the street and whilst Vick was petting away, I discovered some Haribo in the car, which perked me up no end!

Vick seemed to enjoy her time with Gustav the cat. I enjoyed my Haribo, so all was well with the world again.

Having reunited in the car, it was time to head off to Mont Royal, which provided some great views of the city.

The drive to Mont Royal was another challenge.

The direct route was blocked off for some reason, so we ended up going around the houses to reach the central parking area.

We ended up not spending a great deal of time at Mont Royal.

Having parked up and paying for parking, Vick worked out the trail that took us to the best views of the city.

Her choice of location was excellent. The views of the city were indeed fab.

We decided the best approach for the rest of the day was to eat… So we headed back to the hotel, parked up and then walked out to the first Ben & Jerry’s store in the city that we visited yesterday.

Yesterday, they promised that there would be a delivery of Strawberry Cheesecake today.

As I suspected, they still didn’t have any Strawberry Cheesecake in stock, but I asked to taste the non-diary version of the same flavour, and unbelievably, there was no perceptible difference in taste. Wow!

So three scoops of my favourite Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, (Vick went for some alternative flavours) and we were happy bunnies again.

The eating didn’t stop there.

Next stop was McDonalds for me to pick up a Big Arch, or a Le Grand M as they call them in France.

I had seen the ads on TV, I’ve never had one before and I was keen to try one.

Another wow! Tremendous. Very similar to a Big Mac, but a bit bigger!

Whilst I ate my Big Arch outside a health foods shop called Avril, Vick was inside picking up some salad and tomatoes for our dinner.

We also popped back into a regular supermarket to pick up some more cheesecake and some cans of Sam Adams.

We chilled in our room the rest of the day. We had just about enough of traffic, queues and people. So we relaxed.

Dinner comprised another in-house Caesar salad, cheese and biscuits, followed by our newly-purchased cheesecakes.

Off to Quebec tomorrow and back to eating out!

Holiday to Canada in Aug 2024