Driving to Old Montreal - July 4

Today was a busy day.  We left the house and decided to drive to go to the Oratoire St Joseph.  It is on the top of a hill on the island of Montreal.  It was beautiful.  There is a walk outside the Oratoire showing the story of Jesus’ life with amazing statues.  And, at the end, you come to a pool of reflection.  Inside, there are amazing carvings, paintings and stained glass work.  Hard to imagine this was done so long ago without the modern equipment we have today.

From here we went to Schwartz’s Deli.  This is a deli that has been around the city for over 80 years.  Despite the fact that we arrived at 1:30 (well past regular lunch hour) the line up for a seat inside was over 45 minutes long.  We decided to do the take out line (still 10 minutes) and go eat in the car.  The smoked meat here is worth it!  The kids loved the meat, the pickles everything!  I can totally see why people are willing to stand in line for so long for a seat in a little shop on Saint Laurent Street!

From here we decided to go to Old Montreal.  And, let me tell you, as beautiful as the city is it has TERRIBLE signage.  NEVER drive in Montreal no matter what anyone tells you.  We finally found a place to park in Montreal for $17 for the whole day – but because parking is so tight, they take your keys so you have to return at a certain time or your car will be locked in for the night.  We went to this interesting museum called Pointe-de-Callière – the archeology museum of Montreal.  Underneath they have some original findings from the city but like everything else in the city, the route here was not labelled well either!  Upstairs however, they had a great display of the Samurai.  Authentic gear, swords and headdress were all on display.  The kids loved the fact they connected the Samurai to Darth Vader in a way they had never thought of before.  That exhibit was totally worth the price of admission.

We then went to visit IndiPort – the carpet store owned by cousin.  It was huge.  I don’t know what I expected but this was so much more and this is just 1 of 2 stores they have in the city.  Wow.  She insisted we try the McDonald’s poutine which is very close to her store and surprisingly, it was good!  Maybe we should petition McDonald’s to bring that to Alberta!   Just as we were leaving her store, we got caught in a downpour.  The skies opened up and let loose.  It was coming down in sheets so we had to wait it out and missed getting to the science museum with any decent time to see anything.  Still, we went in and looked around at the exhibits and were shooed out by the security guards!

We then headed to our final stop in Old Montreal – the NotreDame Basilica.  From Tuesday to Saturday evenings they do a light and sound show showing the history of the Basilica and the important role it played in the city.  We got our tickets and went in.  WOW.  The show was amazing.  They put up curtains to keep you from seeing certain parts of the Basilica until they discuss the history of it in the video.  It took my breath away when they parted the curtains and you saw the beauty of the whole church.  I can’t even describe it.  Let’s just say you have to go!

We left in time to pick up our truck before the parkade closed and got on the road.  We parked again and just wandered around a little.  The kids had seen a place offering Beaver Tails (fried dough smeared with sticky gooey goodness) and wanted to stop.  I figured, why not?  But, we quickly found out that Old Montreal is not a place for kids at night.  Everything is a pub or a wine bar so we found a sushi spot, ate and went home.