Vacation Highlights: Montreal

On a bit of a whim, we booked a trip to Montreal with our kids for early July. I was inspired by an old friend who spent 10 days in London and was able to see and do so much more than staying two nights here and three nights there, a route we often go so we can see more in a short time. For this trip  we opted for six days in Montreal.

We also picked Montreal over Toronto because we've toyed with the idea of taking our kids to Europe, they're especially into Roman history right now, and we thought that this short plane trip paired with big city living would serve as a good trial run for lengthier trips in the future. We ended up having a fantastic time exploring the city with kids, and these were some of our favorites from our week.

I love going to farmer's markets in any place I'm visiting, and Jean-Talon Market is certainly one of the best I've been to; we spent a couple hours wandering up and down the aisles of this large outdoor market and the surrounding shops (my favorite perimeter shop was this one). Happily snacking on strawberries, we bought a sampling from a half-dozen places for lunch -- pork tacos, lightly breaded fish, shrimp spring rolls, three kinds of oysters, fresh goat cheese, and even more berries. I also loaded up on quiches and more fresh fruit to take back to our apartment for breakfast the next day.

Montreal Botanical Gardens was the one place my kids would have gone to a second time if we had been in town longer (or the heat had been more forgiving). Their gardens are a delight for the senses, and we were enchanted with the variety of interactive playscapes they had outdoors. Pictured above are my kids pretending to be woodpeckers in tall tree trunks and an fascinating art installation made of willows.

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has everything from Picasso to Wiley, and our kids had a blast running up and down their optical illusion installation that runs between two of their buildings.

Staying at an Airbnb (with that incredible view shown above!) in the very walkable Plateau was a great way to get to know the neighborhood, frequent amazing bakeries (like this and this), stumble upon mural after beautiful mural (there are even walks you can do if you want a little direction), eat at restaurants with cuisine from around the world (our favorites were La Demande Generale for French and Negasake for Korean), luck into one of the many summer festivals the city has to offer, and generally get to pretend to live a much more hip life than ordinary.

Eating ice cream every day, and sometimes twice a day, wasn't our plan going into the trip, but a scorching heat wave across much of North America inspired our sampling of the cities' finest dairy delights. Of them all, Ripples had the most incredible, inventive flavors that had us going back for more, and La Diperie had a dazzling array of chocolate shell plus other toppings, like sprinkles and crushed Oreos, to chose from.

To be completely fair, traveling with kids, especially when it's super hot, is not always easy. Not pictured above: a hangry temper tantrum in an Uber that made my husband sweat his potential drop in rating (although the driver was very kind and understanding as a father himself),  repeat reminders to stop clomping from one side to the other of our second floor apartment, and glasses of water spilled on the table for two meals in a row. Traveling with kids requires some work, but so do kids at home, right?

On a final travel note, we flew out of Windsor, and I will certainly be back again. There were three gates, security was super fast, and ticket prices are several hundred dollars less than Metro. So, if you're a SE Michigander, I recommend giving it a try.