Shall we continue? Let’s shall.
Wednesday…
…began as, perhaps, every day should have: bagels. Now I’m not a bagel purist. I grew up in New Jersey and have had my fair share of great doughy rings from Jersey, NYC, and some pretty solid options here in Richmond. I don’t have a canonical bagel in my head so of course I was excited to try Montréal’s distinctive style on its home turf. The photo above is the storefront of the original St-Viateur Bagel in the Mile End neighborhood. Boiled with honey, baked in a wood-fired brick oven, these puppies were really dang tasty and my whole family agreed.
I really wanted to sample Montréal’s rich coffee scene after breakfast so we walked a little bit up and over to Café Éclair where we had some of the most delicious coffee this year. Micro-lot espresso, a huge list of featured and in-house pour-overs, special iced drinks, and a gorgeous cafe meant a repeat visit the very next day. One of the baristas even brought over the grounds for each of Valerie’s and my pour-overs so we could smell them before she brewed them! Outstanding.
The rest of the day included some general exploration and meandering around the old city and port again with a healthy amount of time spent at the excellent Pointe-à-Callière archeology museum. The kids enjoyed it as much as the adults, and we learned a ton about Montréal’s history and its people, including the First Nations peoples that predated colonization.
Dinner was early, though, because we found what was supposed to be a high octane Ramen shop (of COURSE it was in Mont Royal just off Rue Rachel!). They recommended showing up right as they open to avoid long lines and we were glad we did. We arrived at 4:45 before a 5:00 opening, and there was already a couple ahead of us. The dining room completely filled within minutes after our seating, but it was absolutely worth the hype. Yokato Yokabai served some of the most delicious ramen we had ever eaten—so good that I need to wait at least a month before I eat anywhere around Richmond to avoid complete disappointment.
Valerie wanted to wrap up the day with a post-sunset ride on the city’s massive ferris wheel, La Grande Roue de Montréal. I know it’s a huge tourist trap and it’s overpriced, but we were on vacation and the weather was clear, so pourquoi pas? I brought my tripod with us specifically for post ride photos.
Thursday, never looking back
Our last full day in the city started with another trip way out northwest, but this time to ZAB Café on St-Denis in the Le Petite-Patrie neighborhood. Their coffee looked good, but specifically to Valerie’s interests they have their signature Cafelimo drink both on tap and in can multipacks. Valerie loves coffee lemonade from one of our local shops, so she had to try it. If she liked it she could take home a bunch of cans. She did, and she did! ZAB didn’t have much in the way of food (a few cookies) so we made our way back to Mile End to grab some wonderful pastries from Brioche à Tête on Fairmount. [ominous foreboding] I would return later that day…
We caught a bus back toward Place des Arts so we could hit another museum and as we got off the bus our nearly 13-year-old daughter informed us that she’d left her sling pack back at the pastry shop. Heading all the way back out there to retrieve it could scuttle our plans for the day, but I hatched a plan that would both save time and give me an excuse for a final BIXI ride.
But first, that museum: MEM, or Centre des mémoires montréalaises, is all about the people of Montréal. Not so much the founding as much as the recent past, the changing fabric of the city, and the people that have come from near and far to make its population what it is today. There was an excellent video exhibit with interviews about the city’s queer community, urban exploration, a man who dances in parks, a woman who grows banana trees all the way up there, and many other slices of life. Most of the museum’s space was devoted to subsections about the 1976 olympics, the history of alley sheds, alleys themselves, immigrants and the stories/objects they bring with them, the utility infrastructure, and so much more. We could have spent twice as much time there if we hadn’t been so hungry.
Oh yeah—catch that photo with the supermarket flyer? I dug up a little more info about the now-closed store bearing my surname.
So now that missing sling bag. While Valerie took the kids to check out the city’s modest Chinatown in a bit more detail I caught a bike back out to Mile End to see whether the pastry shop still had the bag. They did! Couldn’t hurt to get one more financier before heading back to the hotel, right?
With a successful recovery we headed once more over to the old city to visit Basilique Notre-Dame De Montréal. This cathedral looked a little simpler on the outside compared to some I’ve seen in Europe (heck, even in the US), but holy chickens was it ornate inside. Beautiful in that over-the-top sorta way.
There has to be some kinda metaphor around the convenience of using a credit card to light up a prayer candle…
After the cathedral Valerie wanted a family photo by a “Bonjour Montréal” sign at the port with the skyline in the background, so I indulged. We had our most mediocre dinner of the trip at some forgettable creperie, but wrapped up the night with some pretty solid coffee and wonderful dessert from Le Petit Dep (the Rue St-Paul location). I should have one more post to wrap up the trip soon.
