We vis­it­ed Montréal over Vic­to­ria Day week­end :D We only brought our phones and film cam­eras. The major­i­ty of pic­tures are tak­en on film, and they are being devel­oped as I type! Can’t wait to see them :D But in the mean­while, here are some high­lights from our phones :D

On the first day we went to Biodôme. There were many dif­fer­ent crea­tures to mar­vel at, but I was most attract­ed to these sea urchins and anemones. They’re like pompoms :)

In the after­noon we vis­it­ed Café des Chats, or Cat Cafe, and sat for a while with this fluffy friend while drink­ing tea and peo­ple-watch­ing. We found this cafe by acci­dent; it was across the street from our hotel. Mike and I had some inter­est­ing imag­i­nary con­ver­sa­tions about how the cats were inter­viewed to work in the cafe.

“Do you like being petted?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like tea?”

“Um, I don’t mind it. Will there be tuna?”

“Um, yes. That would be part of the ben­e­fit package.”

“Okay. What is your pol­i­cy on nap times?”

I’m sure the cafe has a very flex­i­ble nap time pol­i­cy, as most of the cats (I count­ed 5, oth­ers were prob­a­bly nap­ping else­where) we saw were nap­ping. But the ones who were awake seemed to enjoy being petted.

And guess what we found?! A shop devot­ed to mycol­o­gy!! :D We also stum­bled upon it by acci­dent while find­ing our way to MEC. Being like a kid in a can­dy store is an under­state­ment. It has every­thing — dried mush­rooms, mush­room ear­rings and neck­laces, mush­room books, mush­room posters, mush­room condi­ments, mush­room for­ag­ing tools, mush­room grow­ing kits, even mush­room tea! (which has to be sim­mered for 2 hours — we did­n’t buy any, but I’m real­ly curi­ous about how it would taste — maybe more like broth than tea?) I did­n’t want to leave, but it was get­ting awk­ward how long we were dawdling there in that lit­tle shop, so we had to leave :( But I did bring home awe­some sou­venirs! :D More on that in a minute…

And then! We came across this won­der­ful cafe called Le K at Square Saint-Louis, which is a love­ly park next to our hotel. The cafe oper­ates out of what might have been a stor­age build­ing for gar­den­ing tools and such for the park (?) (Mike said it looks like a mau­soleum, but I don’t think that’s what it is). It fea­tures large mugs of tea, adorable patio tables and chairs under­neath the trees, mason jars of bloom­ing plants, a book cart, a tri­cy­cle, and real­ly friend­ly own­ers (who offered to take pic­tures of us togeth­er after see­ing Mike tak­ing this pic­ture of me :D). High­ly rec­om­mend a vis­it if you’re in the neigh­bour­hood :D

And in the last night we were in the city we vis­it­ed 1.26 by Janet Echel­man at Les Jardins Gamelin. It was mag­nif­i­cent. And feels a bit sur­re­al stand­ing under­neath it.

As planned we vis­it­ed more well-known places like the Bios­phere, the Muse­um of Archae­ol­o­gy and His­to­ry, the Old Port, Chi­na­town, and St-Via­teur Bagel, and (hope­ful­ly!) we have good pic­tures of these on film, but it seems like we had the most fun stum­bling across awe­some places out­side of our plan. And one would prob­a­bly say that we did a good job find­ing our hotel with all these fun places around! It’s this hotel if you’re won­der­ing, very friend­ly, mod­est size, con­ti­nen­tal break­fast (which saves quite a bit of mon­ey for muse­um vis­its!), no complaints :)

And oh! Sou­venirs! This one we bought at the most won­der­ful out­door mar­ket out­side Mont Roy­al sta­tion. We care­ful­ly packed it so I could car­ry it in my bag on our jour­ney home (we took the train).

And this from Mycobou­tique! :D

We’re now proud own­ers of the com­mon fun­gi poster!! :D

More pic­tures to come soon! Have a good week, everyone!