This is the second time that I went to Montreal. Since my mom who is from Vietnam came and visited me so I wanted to take her to somewhere nice and of course Montreal is our first priority.
First of all, in term of distance, its not really too far away from Toronto (6 hours of driving I guess, since we stopped many times to fill up on gas and have lunch at On Route). Speaking of On Route, I have to say it’s wonderful and convenient.
I used to live in VN. Everytime we went on vacation to a long distance place by bus, to be honest I hated stoping and eating at a random place because the washroom is very dirty and the food is not appetizing which could give me a stomachache during my trip. Each 80 km we can easily find an On Route, the washrooms are sanitary, and there are many popular restaurants like Starbucks, Tim Hortons, Burger King, A&W, KFC… and most importantly, the gas station.
Secondly, our cousin live in Montreal, so we can save money on accommodations.
Thirdly, I really want to try again the orange juice at Gibeau Orange Julep where I tried first time a year ago, and of course we really wanted to discover more places that we didn’t have a chance to visit a year ago.
We started our journey at 6 am on Good Friday morning, April 3rd, 2015. (after 1 hour running around loading our stuff into the car). Speaking of Good Friday, We in Ontario got Friday off but people in Montreal had to wait till Monday. We stop at the first On Route after 1 hour driving to have breakfast. In this trip, we were really excited because we could take our bicycles with us. Since Montreal is popular for bicycling, Thong wanted to explore he city by bicycles and have more exercise. We stopped at another On Route after 2 hours and then went straight to Montreal.
Montreal welcomed us by the warming sunlight. Although this is the second time, We had the feeling that everything here is new to us. All the traffic signs, the billboards of many stores and restaurants are in French. When anyone approaches you, they always started speaking to you in French. And certainly, that made us confused in a second because we don’t know any French but fortunately they would speak English after looking at our confusion.
Olympic Stadium
Knowing that it would snow heavily tomorrow, we took advantage of ice weather today and rode our bicycle to explore the city (we just lived in Montreal for 2 days). I have to confess that riding a bicycle in Montreal is fantastic. They have the bike paths which are really safe. The streets in Montreal look similar to the ones in Vietnam. All the houses are side by side and 1 interesting thing is the stairs in Montreal are on the outside. Our cousin’s house is not really far away from the Olympic Stadium, so it just took us 20 minutes to ride our bicycles to there. Standing on the hill, we could see the overview of the Olympic Stadium and the Biodome, we felt so refreshing and relaxing at that time. Afterward, we went down and rode around the stadium and the Biodome but we didn’t have a chance to come inside and visit. As far as we know, the ticket is 20 bucks/person, and it is open from 9am-6pm.
Cuisine is the one that you cannot miss whenever you travel to a new place, especially Montreal which has a large variety of foods. Poutine is the first one that comes to Thông’s mind when I asked him what he would like to try. Although we tried a lot of poutine in Toronto, Thông said that Montreal is famous for poutine and it is originally form Quebec. I’m not really a big fan of poutine so as I said earlier, one of the reason I want to come back to Montreal is orange juice at Gibeau Orange Julep. To be honest, Thông said that the poutine here is not really different from the ones in Toronto (maybe we didn’t try it at a good place) but the orange juice is fantastic. It is said that it is made from the frozen orange juice in the cans, and they mix it with sugar, milk, vanilla, and a secret ingredient and I guessed that might be eggs. Its flavour is unforgettable.
Knowing that French is the main language is Montreal, but we both seemed not to be scared or worried about that (except for Bonjour and Merci, I have no idea of French. Thông is better than me because he studied some French in high school but I’m 100% sure that he can’t even order anything in French). Luckily the people there still spoke English to us after seeing the confusion on our faced when they spoke French to us!
Our cousin owns a sushi restaurant named 5 Seasons so we got invited to enjoy the sushi there. Sushi has became very popular to us since we have tried a lot of sushi in many different restaurants in Toronto. But we can say that this place is totally different from the ones that we were before. our first impression here was most of diners here are western people. The people work there are very friendly, and they really enjoy doing what they do. When we came inside the bar to film it, they welcomed us with a warming smile. This is not traditional sushi but it’s done very well. I’m not a big fan of raw fish but my husband took one and I tried it. I have to say the fish fresh and expertly prepared. They offered a variety of sauces with the final platter of sushi and suggested which roll goes with which.
For more interesting things about this trip, please watch our video here!