Montreal Day 1

Whoever said Montreal was a lot like Paris was wrong. Montreal is so much nicer! The architecture is a lovely blend of new and old, the prices are reasonable, the culture is lively, and the streets are free of excrement. We've done a LOT of walking, and while we have seen a few homeless people, we haven't seen anyone peeing on the street, and there's no dog doo.

Let me back track a little. We got up at 3 AM in Sweden, drove to Malmo, and took the train to the Airport in Copenhagen. We had been planning on driving over the bridge to Copenhagen, but when we tried to reserve a spot in long term parking, we found out that both long term parking lots were closed for repaving at the same time. Brilliant! We met up with three of my husband's co-workers, and we were all on the same flights to Frankfurt and then on to Montreal. The flights were uneventful. The long flight was on Air Canada, and they had personal video players for each seat. It was really nice to be able to chose your own programming, and with my new Bose noise-canceling headphones, I could actually hear the dialog. I watched Sex and the City (better than I'd expected, but definitely a chick-film), Iron Man (not very believable, but then, it's based on a comic book), an episode of CSI and a couple other shows that I'd never heard of before. For the first time I can remember, I did not sleep on the flight.

It was about noon when we arrived in Montreal, and almost 1 PM when we got to the hotel, but then we found out that check in wasn't until 3. So we stashed our luggage and went for a walk. We were thrilled to discover that we're only a couple blocks from the Latin Quarter. It was a wonderfully bohemian type of place with dozens of restaurants, cafes, and funky little shops. We chose a pizzeria with a sunny patio for lunch. It was about 70 F/21 C, so the sun was wonderful. My husband and I had salads, something that we miss in Sweden. We walked a large loop back to the hotel. Our hotel room was on the 15th floor with a lovely view of the downtown skyline.

After getting settled in, we met up again to go for dinner. We weren't really hungry after our large lunch, so the guys visited a Starbucks and we walked all the way down to the old part of town. It was really gorgeous. I'll definitely have to go back with my camera.We did a large loop by the Notre Dame Cathedral and the waterfront, then we stopped at a Creperie for dinner on our way back to the hotel. The Latin Quarter was rocking for a Friday night, but we were so exausted that we went straight to bed after returning to the hotel at 8 PM.