Visiting Montreal is like going back in time. It’s our own little slice of Europe right here in North America. Old town just screams “French“. The buildings are beautifully old, close together, in a row on original cobblestone streets. The windowsills laced with blooming flowers, and every turn you make you find a cute cafe, restaurant, or shop that begs you to go inside. Step outside of Old Town and the remainder of the city has managed to make Montreal their own. With a less European vibe, it still has a unique sense that shows pride in being French Canadian and simply, a bad ass city. We really enjoyed Montreal, and easily put it on our top 3 lists of places we visited so far. Watch the video to see more about what we did during our stay.

One of the more well known sights in Old Montreal is the Notre-Dame Basilica. While we decided not to go inside for a tour, we enjoyed the beautiful facade from the courtyard. We’ve toured lots of churches in Europe during our visits there and decided our money and time could be spent better elsewhere, although I’ve heard it’s beautiful inside! We could have roamed the streets of old town forever, it had such a romantic feel to it.

There was really cool graffiti all over town. It totally added to the pulse of the city.

One day we went to the Mount Royal, which is most famous for their view of Montreal because of the height of the mountain. It once was an active volcano, and is attributed to creating the island/area of Montreal millions of years ago. It no longer has any activity but sure does give you a nice view.  There are a LOT of steps to get up there, but nothing unmanageable. Don’t worry if you have to stop to take breaks…you won’t be the only one. If you want to really look like a local, pack a picnic and enjoy the beautiful day. The weather was wonderful up there and it was little oasis within the city. I just love how much big cities love parks.

We also went to the Jean Talon Market, which had an awesome selection of produce, wine, goods, fresh food, and more. It was enormous. We bought so much cheese. Our favorite spot was a small shop that forages for wild food. We got fresh wild blueberries, mushrooms, and even sea spinach, which grows by the sea and is super salty. It also has more nutrients than normal spinach because of it’s location to the ocean. From all the amazing goodies we found there, we made an AMAZING meal of handmade ravioli with white wine cream sauce, with chanterelle mushrooms topped with parmesan. It was a super impressive and tasty meal from local and fresh ingredients which was really cool!