While we are on our eastern state loop this year, we are taking the opportunity to explore a little bit of Canada. We took a day trip to Montreal. We’ve been in and out of Canada for the last year. We crossed that border six times while we made our way to and from Alaska. This time we were nervous. We don’t speak French. Not even a little bit. Mr. Man can recognize some of it, but he’s still pretty useless as a translator. We armed ourselves with a map (the only one we could find was in…French) and we programmed our car’s GPS for all of our destinations (in order) the night before. We rely on our phones for information and directions more than we probably should so it was definitely a learning experience heading to a place where we wouldn’t have our security blanket.

Our goal was to find and visit seven places. We managed to see them all! And we only got lost once…well, not really lost. We knew where we were, we just had to find our way through the maze of one way streets.

Our first stop was the Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral. I’m not going to be able to tell you much about these places…again, the info we found was mostly in French. I can tell you that this cathedral was inspired by the St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral was built at the end of the 19th century.

Since we’re talking about churches…I have a confession…my camera isn’t the quietest camera. The shutter is loud. I could have happily shot tons of pictures in this cathedral, but it’s a working cathedral. There were people actively praying and I didn’t want to intrude. So, I got a few OK shots and just walked around soaking in the beauty. I did get a dome shot. Y’all know my love of domes.

Our second stop was Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal. The sun was not my friend here. So, you’ll have to suffer with a shoddy picture.

We almost skipped going inside because you have to pay to get in. We walked in and our mouths dropped open. Pictures don’t even begin to do it justice. There are guided tours here. We didn’t do one since we were on a schedule. We overheard a tour guide tell her group that there are so many churches in Montreal that one closes almost weekly so the churches are now run like a business to stay open. Which is why we had to pay just to go inside.

Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal was built between 1824 and 1829.

Our next stop was the Old Montreal neighborhood where the streets are still cobblestone and some the buildings date back to the 17th through 19th centuries. We had a good time wandering around and people watching.

Right next to Old Montreal is Old Port. I also have a thing for harbors. I don’t get to see as many, but I always snap a few pictures when I find one.

Stop four was the Square Saint Louis. I’d found a picture of the homes in the photo above and wanted to see them in person. The whole neighborhood is in this same style of Victorian row houses.

Stop five was the Montreal Botanical Garden. The Botanical Garden was founded in 1931 and today is known as one of the largest in the world. It’s huge!

There are around thirty thematic gardens. We walked through several of them. It took longer than I thought it would…probably because I kept stopping to take pictures of the flowers.

 There were flowers of every color, shape, and size imaginable! I could have spent the entire day exploring the gardens.

The day we went was a wonderfully warm, sunny day. And guys…it smelled soooo good here! I walked around just sniffing everything. I’m sure I had a stupidly ridiculous grin on my face…but how can you be anything but happy when you’re surrounded by flowers?!

One of the thematic gardens was a Chinese garden. It was under construction so the only shot I got was the one above.

By this time, we had three boys that thought they were going to wither away if we didn’t feed them soon. So, we cut our garden visit short and went in search of food. I had already picked a place to eat. You won’t be surprised to learn it was a pizza place so Littlest could check Montreal off of his pizza list. I’ll let him fill you in on where we ate. I will say this about it…the guys working there were the nicest! Seriously, they were super nice.

Our last stop of the day was Saint Joseph’s Oratory.

The crutches and canes hanging between the pillars were left by pilgrims near the shrine of Saint Joseph.

I didn’t take too many pics here. I snapped this one quickly, but didn’t take any others of the shrine. It’s a huge place with so many different levels and rooms. Some of the rooms felt very sacred (like the votive room in the picture above), but others felt more like a tourist trap. It was odd. They even had a guide book in English you could buy. We did. It was interesting, but a little confusing as it led us all over the place. We’d never seen escalators in a church before so that was new for us.

We were tired and ready to go home. We had a great day and thoroughly enjoyed our time in Montreal!

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016