Montreal - where Europe meets America....

Bonjour! Hello! That is the standard greeting in Montreal. Both languages - French and English - everywhere and all the time! :)

We got to Montreal kind of late but already had a particular hotel downtown picked out due to their 'pet friendly' status... We also had a couple of recommendations from Emma about where to eat! Oh yeah. We had Tunisian food to go and ate it in our room. Cous cous, chicken, cucumber salad, lentil soup and also lamb that tasted exactly like roast beef. Yum!

The best thing we noticed upon driving into town was that there are blocks and blocks of apartments with their stairs on the front side of the street. It's actually really interesting and I think, very pretty. Most of the stairs are black or white, but then there are some painted red or blue or yellow! I love the stairs! They are also curved or angled, or spiral. All different kind of stairs! I made Wren drive an hour or 2 in rush hour traffic so we could get back to the street we arrived on thus I could take pictures of the stairs.

We woke up and decided to explore a couple different parts of town. I really wanted to see the massive church - Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal. It's a gorgeous church but unfortunately with the amount of construction in the area and the lack of parking options for a F350 truck, we just took pictures from the truck windows and drove around the church a lot. :) It's ok - I think Lisa and I hit up about 30 churches in Europe - so I'm covered in that department.

So, Wren had googled the top 10 free things to do in Montreal and number 4 was Parc du Mont Royal, a huge park that takes up a good portion of the city. It also seemed as though the summit of this mountain in the park was the dog-friendly part of the park. Bowser said he was 'in' so we went for it!

Don't be deceived by the snow on the ground - I mean, that is real snow - but it was HOT hiking up that hill! Bowser had the best time of his life. He made about 30 friends in 40 minutes. He was even greeted by a crazy lady walking a pack of 8 poodles. He ran and jumped and pooped and peed and ran and slid and pooped and peed and bit and played and slid and jumped. OH man. If Bowser had a top ten things accomplished thus far on the trip - this PARK would be NUMBER ONE.

We soon left Montreal but not before I had a Molson and a salad....