Our first foray up to Montreal was with two of our friends from California. Surprise – the border crossing was extremely easy and it took only 1.5 hours to make it to downtown.
We walked around the Montreal Museum of Art and then the Botanical Gardens. Because it was our first time there, we chose easy destinations to drive to, nothing we had to navigate tricky parallel parking, obeying signs we couldn’t read because they were in French.
The Garden was huge and beautiful. We loved the themes and took so many photos. It was a rainy day, so we had to run under a Chinese pagoda or sneak into an insect exhibit to get away from the raindrops whenever it started to pour.
I bravely chose a poutine restaurant in little Portugal, also known as Hochelaga. We walked there from the Botanical Gardens and had our very first French Canadian meal!