My best friend is going to spend next summer sailing, so we decided to spend winter break on vacation together instead of next summer. This was again going to be a challenge weather-wise, but in the opposite way of the summer.

My mom took me to MEC (now Canadian-owned again!) and they had the exact kind of sweater I had been looking for – black, full-length front zipper, no hood, pockets – to replace the Norwegian-style knit sweater I’d used until it wore holes in both elbows, so I bought that, and my mom bought me a puffy down vest identical to one that she wears every day. I also bought reusable chemical hand warmers on a different trip.

And I got me some new hiking boots, because someone else on the Internet was like “I went on vacation in Montreal with just hiking boots and double wool socks instead of buying winter boots that I’ll never use again”, and I had given away my previous hiking boots some time ago because my feet changed shape or something and they were no longer comfortable. My new boots are not as cute as my old boots, but once they were broken in (a task I foolishly did not do beforehand) they did keep my feet warm and dry more or less, with the help of double-layering socks, and the tread had pretty good grip on the ice we encountered. I could go on for several paragraphs about socks and my quiet-but-strong preferences thereof (neurodivergence yay?) and how many I’ve acquired this year and why, but that’s probably not interesting to most people, with the exception that someone from one of my choirs also gave me a lovely pair of hand-knit socks, in festive red and green, which was very nice!

My mom also lent me a wool undershirt and pants, which she also wears very often, which were great although I think maybe I had some kind of allergic reaction to them because I was always extremely itchy when I took them off (at first I thought it was because it was super dry and I needed to moisturize, which was maybe part of it, but I don’t think all of it). At least I also had thermal pants from that one time I went camping in Norway.

Dec 19 – I flew out of Victoria and it was at a very reasonable hour for once, though I didn’t sleep much beforehand as usual. Sadly Victoria has not updated their x-ray machines and you still need to take your laptops out (and/or liquids, but I checked my other bag so I didn’t have to do that). The machine gave me a ‘standby’ ticket, and then Air Canada texted me to tell me they had assigned me a seat and I could get my new ticket on the app, so I downloaded the app, but then the lady at the gate counter just gave me a new ticket (for a different seat, it got changed again). The app is pretty good though, it gives deadlines and updates and even keeps an eye on your checked luggage (mostly).

In the waiting room there was a young woman with a cat in a soft carrier, and a toddler became enthralled with the “meow meow”. She wanted to pet it right up until they had to board. The cat occasionally became mildly restless, but in general was quiet and calm. Even its meows were quiet.

There was turbulence on landing in Toronto, and my flight had been slightly delayed, but fortunately my next flight was also delayed. So I had time to go to the bathroom. But the turbulence made me a bit motion sick, and the smell of juicy burgers from nearby restaurants made me pretty queasy. But in the Toronto-Montreal plane I had a window seat and no one in the middle seat, huzzah!

There was more turbulence on landing in Montreal and this time my motion sickness was really bad. It was nice to just sit and wait for my other bag to get unloaded. I was in contact with Tharash over Discord, he’d landed a couple hours before me and gone to our hostel, which let him pay and check in to the room. Then he was hungry and went looking for food at a Korean place a block or so away, and brought back some japchae for me too, which saved me.

I was a bit worried that it was getting late, so instead of waiting for the 747 bus I decided to take a taxi. This was a mistake. The taxi driver did not put in the correct address for the hostel, and took me to the wrong place entirely – like 5 metro stops away. I’m not even sure it was a hotel, it could have just been a random building. But I forgot what the hostel looked like so I didn’t call him out on it (I should have – what hotel/hostel doesn’t have their name prominently on their building???) He was also on some kind of group call with other taxi drivers, and asked for cash payment (kind of sketch tbh??). It took me 5 minutes of looking at my phone to figure out exactly where I was (I don’t know how to turn on GPS and maybe I don’t want to). Luckily the metro was just a couple blocks away so it was easy to get to the hostel after that. But man that was a crappy experience and I wish I could go back and do something else in that situation, it still makes me grumpy thinking about it.

Anyway Tharash was ‘asleep’ when I came in (fair, it was like nearly 1am IIRC, which would be like 7am the next day Europe time), so I just put my stuff down and took the food and devoured 3/4 of it upstairs in the hostel common area until I was full. The heating unit in the room was very loud and came on periodically, and I was pretty stressed, so I didn’t get much sleep again.

Dec 20 – I woke up at like 6:45 which is a bit crazy because that’s like 3:45am in BC time. The hostel breakfast started at 7:30 so at least we were ready for that, lol. The hostel also has an ATM so I could replace some of the money I foolishly gave away to someone who didn’t even completely provide the service I asked for. The first thing on our list of things to do as tourists was an audio tour of the old city of Montreal which we had selected from the Internet before our trip. It was okay overall, but it was really just “interesting buildings along a route” and I feel like I didn’t really learn that much about Montreal. But then again, I’m still not convinced there’s that much to learn about Montreal. Sorry to say it, but Montreal is kind of overrated, and the old city especially so. Even though it was sunny out.

At least the Basilica of Notre-Dame lives up to the hype. I’ve been there once for a wedding that was in the chapel when I was a young teen (and tbh I only really remember the wedding stuff in Montreal, my parents have pictures of us also doing tourist stuff but I don’t remember any of that at all). The main part of the church is absolutely gorgeous. They had four CDs for sale, choir and organ, $5 each, so… I got all of them. Tharash bought the guidebook for his parents, it has lots of lovely pictures. The chapel was just like I remembered, with the great big golden centrepiece on the back wall; maybe it was overall brighter than I remember? I remembered the outer walls being quite dark. It’s been 20 years, it could have gotten a lift. There was a sign saying no photos of the chapel, though.

Then a chamber choir came in to rehearse with the organ and I was in heaven. They were damn good, rehearsing Christmas hymns.

The tour continued past some courthouses and the city hall, down past the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours church, and past the Marché Bonsecours.

For some reason my picture of the Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours Chapel is not uploading to my blog, so here’s the Wikipedia page.

One thing that struck Tharash about Montreal was the flocks of sparrows that were everywhere even in the heart of the city. In his European experience, sparrows tend to like more suburban environments where they have more of the right kind of nesting spaces and foraging spaces. But we saw tons of them in certain places, like a potted pine tree outside the market. I would also remind you we saw squirrels earlier, Tharash was not expecting them either. Montreal is kind of weird that way.

Next the tour took us ambling up and down Place Jacques Cartier which in good weather had always been and still is used as a market, though today it was not (and it was starting to cloud over too). We stopped in a First Nations art gallery there; the lower level was a boutique selling fur-trimmed fashion (very classy, definitely for rich people) and the upper level had a lot of Inuit carvings. Even the smallest ones were kind of out of our price range, even though it would have been nice to get one for Tharash’s mom who likes that kind of thing.

In the winter it’s also not a very pretty city, especially in the state it was at that time where it had snowed but not recently and what was left was more or less dirty salty ice. And there were large chunks of it under renovation/restoration that made it feel like it was full of holes – not literal holes, but spaces that people did not want to be in. The old city actually felt very desolate, in spite of the tourist shopping street putting out pretty Christmas lights and the tourists there. It felt forlorn and desperate. Not helped by the fact that cars are still allowed to drive there.

But the river was heavily frozen, which was really neat for us temperate-zoners. The water between all the piers was frozen over, and it sure looked thick to me. The wind was super freakin cold and I felt like I nearly froze my hand off taking pictures at the clock tower (I have to use my hand skin to take pictures on my phone, I don’t have like a touch-screen stylus or anything for my phone).

We went back to Marché Bonsecours and got lunch at a pub in the basement – I had onion soup (very cheesy) and Tharash had poutine. I’m not sure the cheese curds were squeaky enough, but he was happy with it. He also had a “S’mores” beer and I had a strawberry rhubarb beer, which he said was too summery for him (he liked his beer much better) but idk, it was tasty to me.

After that we stopped in at the Bonsecours church, which had two trombone players playing carol duets outside for like an hour which was fun, and drew quite a crowd. We went inside and were informed that there was going to be a chamber choir performance in 15 minutes, so we stayed. The church was very pretty. Unlike the chamber choir at the cathedral, however, this choir was… a bunch of student amateurs? They were really bad. Dangerously flat. They started out with Dona Nobis Pacem and ouch. Even Tharash could tell they were not very good. I left a donation anyway to support the arts.

After a sleepy break at the hostel, we went to a vegetarian buffet restaurant, Resto Végo St-Denis, which was great. They had two kinds of tourtiere! Their tourtiere du lac was the better of the two. There was also two kinds of maple pie. Then we went back to the hostel and had tea in the common area before bed.

Dec 21 – My sleep was still sporadic, but at least I was able to sleep much later. My nose was very dry from the dry air, and I was starting to notice the itchy legs and also that my hiking boots were not broken in. The boot-top parts were rubbing on my anklebones; it didn’t do blisters exactly, it was more like chafing.

We didn’t go out so early this day, trying to decide whether or not to visit the history museum. We’d been rather dissatisfied with the walking tour and wanted more history than just “Montreal was Canada’s grain port and that’s why there’s a historic eyesore on the other side of the canal” (that thing is ugly). But eventually we decided to just go to Schwartz’s which my parents recommended for the Montreal smoked meat sandwich experience. Tharash is normally a vegetarian, but if this is a *destination* then he was willing to try it.

It was so busy there was a line-up outside. There were just two other people lined up there when we got there, but when we left only like 30 minutes later it was more like 10 people. We just got classic sandwiches. They were good but… I dunno, not as incredible as the hype made them out to be. I’m not sure what I was expecting… more smokiness? but they just seemed… normal.

Anyway, we were awfully close to the mountain at this point, so we just walked past the Sir George-Étienne Cartier monument and into the wilderness. It was a bit slippery, and I was thankful for my new hiking boots and their excellent grip. We went to the top of the ridge and found the stairs were closed for the winter. So we walked around the front of the mountain until we found another way up and another viewpoint. But you can’t see the old city because of all the new city in the way.

There’s a pavilion at the lookout, the Chalet du Mont-Royal, and there’s a cafe in the pavilion, so I had a London fog and Tharash had a hot chocolate. Then we decided that the most interesting thing in the vicinity was probably going to be St. Joseph’s Oratory, which I had suggested a couple months before but had taken off the list since we were also going to see Notre-Dame. It was a bit of a walk to get there, and despite the Oratory being the only building permitted to break the city rule of “not taller than the mountain” it kind of sneaks up on you.

It’s so monumental, inside and out. It’s still freakin cool on the inside. I wished I could hear the organ, but at least I could see it. Tharash thinks I like the interior because the art deco architecture ‘looks Star Warsy’ lol. Sadly there were no organ CDs in the gift shop, but I did get a medallion like the ones I get from churches and castles in Europe. Though I think my European ones are higher quality now that I’m looking at them all. I need to make a display for them.

We took the metro back to our hostel as twilight came on, and when it was properly dark out, went out again to take pictures of the lights and buildings at night. Our final destination was the 3 Brasseurs pub downtown. There was a hockey game on, Montreal vs. Pittsburgh. Montreal was losing by one point when we left. Anyway, I had the 3 Brasseurs Burger with maple beer sauce, and coleslaw on the side, and a cider; Tharash had a flamkuchen and a blonde ale.

I was curious about the building that the pub was in, because it looked neat, so I asked the waitress if she knew, and she did! It was originally a warehouse in the old port, storing grain and hops. It could already have been a microbrewery back then. At some point there was a school there, but also at some point the top half burned down, and when it was rebuilt it got turned into the brewery/restaurant that it still is today.

Next – Ottawa