Montreal Part Deux - Coasters & Soccer

After spending our first day walking all around Montreal, our rainy second day started with brunch at L'Avenue, which was delicious and over-the-top. Because of the weather we decided to visit a museum, and walked to the Redpath Museum. It's a small but interesting natural history museum in a historic building on the campus of McGill University. The exhibits are a bit dated but the museum is free and the architecture is impressive. We spent a little time at a cafe downtown to wait out some of the rain before heading to St. Helen's island to visit La Ronde amusement park.

Rainy morning in Montreal.

Way too much food!

Banana nutella french toast with coconut and bourbon maple syrup.

Fall was just arriving.

The front of the Redpath Museum.

View of downtown Montreal from the steps of the museum.

The main exhibit hall.

An advertisement for our game!

The biosphere museum on the island, not far from La Ronde.

La Ronde isn't a great park, but it was the largest amusement park in the western hemisphere that Paul hadn't visited yet. Cross this one off the list! It does have a fun Batman clone and a pretty good Goliath coaster. We got the credits and caught an Uber back across the river to the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighborhood, where we stopped by a retro video game store and got a snack at the marche maisonnueve. This market/foodhall is in some new buildings next door to the historic 1912 market building. From there we took the metro part way back to our AirBnb, and walked through the gay neighborhood, which is quite large in Montreal. We rested for a bit before dinner.

Rainy day means no crowds!

Paul at La Ronde.

The Olympic stadium tower looming in the distance.

The old market building.

Inside the new market.

Rainbow flags.

Portuguese chicken for dinner.

The next morning we were greeted with sunny clear skies, so we decided to walk up to the viewpoint at the top of Mont Royal. Along the way we grabbed a coffee from the tiny and adorable Oh My Deer cafe, then continued to the mountain up winding trails. It was pretty crowded because of the great weather, but it was an enjoyable little hike and we were rewarded with amazing views across the city.

Montreal's row-houses and apartments have a lot of winding stairs.

A back alley.

Montreal also has a lot of funky architecture and murals.

It's Paul's store!

Lets climb up there!

Paul on the trail.

David at the top, featuring sun rays.

Great view of the city!

Walking back down.

We walked back down the mountain toward the city, and walked a bit around downtown and St Catherine's street, eventually making our way to a restaurant called Arepera for lunch. They had good arepas and fresh fruit juices. We made a quick stop back at our Airbnb to change and get warmer clothing for the soccer game.

We walked by the museum of fine arts but didn't have time to go inside.

A restaurant street in downtown.

Downtown Montreal.

The Edward VII monument in Phillip's Square.

Pork arepa!

We took the train to the main event of the weekend: Atlanta United vs. Montreal Impact. Montreal's soccer stadium is in a multi-use stadium area that includes the 1976 Olympic stadium. The soccer stadium isn't the nicest, but maybe we're just spoiled by Mercedes Benz stadium. The game ended in a tie, but we had a great time. At the end of the game the Montreal supporters group invited all of the Atlanta United fans over and we had fun singing together. Class act, Montreal!

Under the stands in Stade Saputo.

Ready for the game.

Find Paul!

On the way home we had a late dinner at Co Ut, a Vietnamese restaurant near our AirBnB. The next morning we went to the airport for our flight connecting in Toronto. Our plane was a WestJet (code-shared with Delta) turbo prop! As we started going down the runway to take off, the plane suddenly decelerated and we pulled over to the side. Turns out there was a problem with the front tire and they had to abort take off. The flight ended up getting canceled, but Delta re-booked us on a direct flight to Atlanta and we ended up arriving at about the same time we were originally scheduled. Yay for Delta customer service!

Montreal is a great city and should be on your travel radar. It's very accessible, but has an international multi-lingual flair, walkable neighborhoods, and a variety of attractions.

Fancy spring rolls.

Our last meal in Montreal.

Been a while since we flew on one of these....

Au revoir, Montreal!

Bienvenue à Montréal!

We've attended at least one Atlanta United away game each year (in Chicago, San Jose, and Salt Lake City), and this year we had our eye on a game in Montreal. David visited Montreal way back in 2012, but Paul had never been. So we booked our flights and spent a long weekend exploring the French-Canadian city.

We landed at night, and went straight to our AirBnB in the Le Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood. Our place was in a cute residential area with tree-lined streets and shops and restaurants. We highly recommend this area just northwest of downtown, as it's close to everything and has good transit access. The next morning we started with a long walk through several neighborhoods. We strolled through St Louis square and grabbed some coffee at Cafe Nocturne before walking by Parc du Portugal and getting a bagel at Fairmount. Montreal is famous for their wood-fired bagels, and Fairmount has been around since 1919.

Montreal is a great city for biking.

The fountain in St. Louis square.

Lots of pretty housing stock in Montreal.

A pedestrian street near our AirBnb.

Fancy coffee and a golden bike.

The city has a lot of murals and street art.

Parc du Portugal had cobblestones similar to what we saw in Lisbon.

More street art!

Fairmount bagel.

Bagel time!

A big Italian grocery store in the Mile End neighborhood.

Montreal is great for wandering, with tree-lined streets.

Our next stop was the church our lady of defense, which oddly has a fresco that includes Mussolini, before continuing on to the Jean Talon Market. It's a pretty big market and worth visiting for the food options, but we decided to hold off and eat lunch on our way back towards the old port area. We caught the Metro and it was packed because Montreal was hosting a climate march. That meant public transit was free for the day, which was a great bonus for us, but it was also really crowded. Hundreds of thousands of people attended the march, including prime minister Trudeau and Swedish high school climate superstar Greta Thunberg. We had poutine for lunch at La Banquise, then walked through part of Fontaine Park with a brief stop at our AirBnB before continuing to the touristy old town area.

Mussolini is up there. Can you find him?!

Jean Talon Market.

Some climate marchers getting ready a few hours before the event.

Not the last poutine we'd have on this trip!

Fontaine park on a beautiful sunny fall day.

After a quick stop at our AirBnb, we hopped back on the Metro to old town, the historic center of Montreal. One interesting thing about Montreal's Metro - despite looking like trains, the subway is actually a series of rubber tire buses; like the Metro system in Mexico City or the Plane Train at the Atlanta airport. The metro is also almost exclusively in French. About 15% of Montreal's population speaks English as their first language, but the city government signs almost nothing in English. No English instructions, no English announcements, and only the slightest amount of English on some emergency signs. We assume this is an attempt to hold up the French language history of the city, but it was a bit odd. MARTA in Atlanta signs most things in English and Spanish and we don't have 15% of our population speaking Spanish as a first language. It was still very easy and convenient to take public transit around the city. The metro was unique in being French only, as around the rest of the city just about everything is in French and English, and you can easily get around without speaking a single word of French. It's a true bilingual city.

We started our afternoon by visiting Notre Dame cathedral, and then continued on to Pointe-à-Callière, the museum of archaeology and history. It's a neat museum in historic buildings, and includes some original foundations from old Montreal buildings. You can even walk through an old sewer. It's a bit pricey, but gives a good overview of the history of the city. We walked around old town a bit more, taking in the waterfront and visiting the sailor's church.

Yay, free subway! In French only.

The crowd heading to the climate march.

Old town has some great architecture.

Notre Dame cathedral.

The inside is impressive. Beautiful blues and golds.

A cute little cafe in old town.

Pointe-à-Callière had a high-tech video in this unique room.

Walking through the old sewer.

David's a pirate!

Old town Montreal is very European.

The Sailors Church.

After a long day of walking, it was time for happy hour! We decided to check out a couple of breweries. Our first stop was Four Origins, a very popular microbrewery. It was great weather for hanging out in the indoor/outdoor space. The beer was pretty good too. We continued southwest along the canal to Terrasse St. Ambroise, a huge beer garden in an industrial area. We sat and relaxed for a while and enjoyed a flight of samples. By now we were hungry, and we walked to Satay Brothers in the Saint-Henri neighborhood. While still close to downtown, this is more of a locals neighborhood, with a few bars and restaurants along Notre Dame street.

Side note - we noticed this at Satay brothers but also at most restaurants in Montreal. They all play extremely loud music, usually American rap or hip hop. It's quite odd, as it happens even at breakfast. At Four Origins it was difficult to even talk across the table because the rap music was so loud. It seems to be something Montreal restaurants do to show off their hipster credentials.

After dinner at Satay brothers, we hopped on the nearest metro station and headed back to near our AirBnB. On the way we stopped at Dumpling Hut and got a few chive and pork dumplings to snack on that evening along with some dessert from St Louis Pastries in the metro station. All-in-all a good first full day in Montreal!

Four Origins brewery.

Terrasse St. Ambroise.

Paul's happy! Flights for days. 

Satay Brothers.

Dinner time!

Fruity boozy drinks-a-plenty.