(Montréal, Québec, Canada)
One of the attractions of living in Kingston is that it is relatively close to three major Canadian cities: Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal. Any of these can be reached by car or train in less than 3 hours…a short commute by Canadian standards. My wife and I often spend a weekend in one of them: sometimes the “anchor” is a music or sports event, but sometimes we just feel like visiting a bigger city and don’t have any scheduled events lined up.
Every one of my trips so far this year has been through Toronto, so I jumped at the opportunity to spend some time in Montréal. This was a weekday trip, as I needed to renew my Swiss passport and the consulate’s hours are somewhat limited. In fact, it was an overnight trip because I had an early morning appointment at the consulate. I’m not complaining: Montréal is a great place to visit!
One of the big attractions in Montréal is the food. Kingston has quite a good variety of dining options for a city of its size, but it cannot compare to what’s available in Montréal. Upon arrival on Tuesday, I had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant called Lola Rosa in the McGill University district. I’m not strictly vegetarian but I like to visit good vegetarian restaurants. This one was above average – the presentation of the food was especially good. I had a vegetarian chili; apparently, the beans were soaked in red wine before cooking.
Montréal also has an excellent vinyl record store. It’s called Aux 33 Tours and I visit it whenever I can. As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, visiting independent record stores helps me to see urban neighbourhoods that are off the usual tourist trail. After a couple of hours (!) in the record store and a long walk to and from the Plateau Mont-Royal district, I was ready for a substantial dinner.
Dinner certainly was substantial. I met a friend for dinner and we went to Le Nil Bleu for Ethiopian cuisine. Whenever I can introduce friends to Ethiopian food, I do. What can be more fun than eating spicy and colourful food with your hands? We ordered the “tasting menu” in order to sample a wide variety of dishes. This particular restaurant was located on rue St.-Denis and was a cut above the usual in terms of comfort and variety. While it didn’t quite match the awesomeness and good value of Winnipeg’s Massawa restaurant (still my favourite Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant), it was a very satisfying and tasty meal.
After “taking care of business” at the Swiss consulate (see picture at top of this post), I did some more shopping and decided to let fate decide where I would eat. A couple of years ago, my wife and I enjoyed a great brunch at La Petite Ardoise restaurant in the Mile End district. Alas, it was closed for renovations this time. The next place to catch my eye was a humble Venezuelan place called Bocadillo at the corner of boulevard St.-Laurent and avenue du Mont-Royal. I had Venezuelan-style pulled pork (made with passion fruit) and it was very good.
While this trip was mostly about music and food, there really is a lot to see in Montréal. Unfortunately, you aren’t going to see much of it in this posting because I forgot my camera. I packed “without a list” this time because it was such a short trip…and somehow I overlooked the camera. I had an iPod with me, but it is designed for “selfies” rather than traditional photography. I did my best with it but the picture quality isn’t quite up to this blog’s usual standards. I think I’ll need to visit Montréal again soon in order to properly chronicle the city!