Castro Travels: North of The Border (Part 1)

June 12th-14th

Just over a year ago, Joe, Jed and I took off for a long weekend to head to Boston for Tim & Wendy's wedding. One year later, Tim & Wendy were ready to celebrate their one year anniversary with as many friends that would join in Montreal, Canada.

You know us, we love the opportunity to celebrate and travel so we jumped at the invite. For some reason on this trip, flying felt too boring so we decided to road trip it. We hopped in the car on Thursday night to head north.

Thursday night was fairly uneventful. We made a quick stop for pizza at George's in the cute little town of Carlisle, PA.

We made it as far as Binghamton, NY on Thursday night before we decided to call it quits.

Friday morning we headed out and quickly found a worm hole to Mexico! How can you pass up a quick trip to Mexico so we did.

We spent some time there just walking around before continuing our trip north.

When we got back on the road, we realized we are in an area over flowing with cheese so we had to stop at a hole in the wall for some local cheese.

With all of our detours, we were starting to get behind so we put on blinders, made notes of places to stop on our way home and made it over the border late afternoon.

After a quick border stop and a few hours of driving the countryside of Canada, we made it to Montreal. We beat Tim, Wendy & Mary to our home for the long weekend so we were able to meet and talk with Diane about all kinds of things while we waited. We were a little worried about the language barrier. We didn't learn any French and I remember VERY little from when I was in high school. Thankfully her English was very good so we didn't have any issues there.

Once Tim, Wendy & Mary got there, we got the grand tour and off Diane went for the weekend. Wendy found this place on airbnb and it was perfect for us. Very uniquely decorated (all done by her son, who is an artist and lives in the townhouse right beside/below us) but a great location and a ton of space.

Once we explored the house a little & called dibs on bedrooms, we headed out to find dinner and explore Montreal.

Just two blocks away we found the Mural Festival. Jed & I were so excited, this was right up our alley. It was fantastic to see all the art and watch people work. We took a million pictures!

As we walked down Boulevard Saint-Laurent we were able to check out all the street vendors, shops and murals. The city had closed down the road for the Mural Festival that weekend. Wendy had found a great little local restaurant called Patati Patata, where they are known for their poutine.

This place was TINY and a little intimidating at first. Everything is in French so we had no idea what we were doing, you just walk up order and either leave or wait for a table to open up. The restaurant only seats about 20. Thankfully, one of the guys working was very, very nice. He was bi-lingual and was a huge help with figuring out the menu and helping us get seats.

We all really enjoyed this place and even had a window seat so we could watch the world go by.

After dinner, we went exploring in the city. We all just walked, window shopped, watched people as they painted murals. It was a great city.

It started to rain around the time all the shops were closing up so we decided to head back to the house to see what we could find there. On our way home, we found a cupcake shop, D liche! It has been awhile since I had tried a new cupcake but it just felt right.

That night we tried all the different cupcakes and we were HIGHLY disappointed. Not sure that anyone eats cupcakes in this area cause they tasted like they had been sitting out for about 2 weeks.

We called it quits that night before the final 4 people made it to the house for the night.

Saturday morning, Jed and I got up early. We figured with 9 people trying to get ready first thing in the morning it would take a while so we would start the process early. By the time we were ready to go, no one else was moving in the house so we decided to head out and go explore while everyone else slept and got ready. Everything we read told us to check out the local markets, so we found their subway station and headed to Jean-Talon Market.

I guess we were even early for them as many were starting to set up and get ready for that Saturday morning crowd. We walked around, took some pictures, found a coffee shop and hung out for a little while.

We checked out a few shops before wandering away from the market. The market was really close to Little Italy so we went to see what we could find. There were all kinds of things to see as we wandered. We even stumbled across a movie shoot!

But I think by far, Jed and I both really enjoyed all the graffiti/murals/art that was all over the city. I really loved how they were able to mix old world/historical/old with new and modern. I know most won't agree with us but we loved it!

As we wandered we found the bagel shop, St. Viateur Bagel. Montreal is known for there bagels, they are unlike NY bagels but everything talked about them, so we had to try them. We grabbed two hot bagels and off we went.

In Montreal, there are two competing bagel shops so we took our St. Viateur bagels and headed over to Fairmount Bagel.

St. Viateur bagels are really good right out of the oven. You can only get plan, sesame or poppy seed bagels. Most of the locations for St. Viateur only sell bagels. Tiny little places with a cooler with a few drinks, butter and cream cheese, a cash register and an oven where Fairmount, you can get 15 or so different kinds of bagels and different kinds of bagel sandwiches. Even though Fairmount took a lead in my book because they have garlic bagels (the best!), I think St. Viateur would win the bagel competition in my book.

As we were getting to Fairmount Bagels, we got a text from the house, they were awake and moving so we offered to bring them an assortment of Fairmount bagels and we headed back for a late second breakfast with the group.

We all headed out together around 11:30 or 12 to explore more of the city. Our first stop was to an old bookstore called Archambault. Definitely not what I thought it would be but we all had fun exploring the 3 floors of books, music and musical instruments. We are definitely traveling with some very musical individuals. People were playing guitars, ukuleles, pianos and mandolins. It was fun. A few of us purchased a few things and it was pretty funny and uncomfortable when the cashier only spoke French to me. I must have faked it well, or she just didn't care cause she just kept on speaking in French. For all I know she was just saying how dumb I was for not knowing the language.

Right down the street from Archambault is a neighborhood called The Village. You know have reached this neighborhood because it is lined with over 170,000 pink ball ornaments. We didn't get to walk around this area as much as we wanted before the group was ready for lunch. Wendy and I quickly found a great little Chinese place right in the heart of Montreal's Chinatown.

Finding a table for 9 is going to be challenging anywhere and these restaurants we were finding were tiny little places, we took up a good part of the restaurant, Restaurant Noodle Factory. The food was great and it reminded Jed, Tim and I of our trip to China a few years ago.

After lunch, we headed to the Old Montreal area. The goal was to check out Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal.

Unfortunately, the church was closed for the rest of the day due to a wedding so we walked around and check out other areas.

After checking out a few shops, we decided to go separate ways for a few hours and let everyone explore the area the way they wanted to. Jed & I found the Clock Tower to explore and headed up to the top.