Day 3: Montreal

Day 1, Day 2

Day 3 began with a sleep in until 830. EIGHT-THIRTY! Whoohoo! We took our time getting ready and ate a delicious French breakfast (Meal #7...free) before our city tour at 10. We started with this lady:

who was our tour guide for the day. She was very interesting and funny and spoke impeccable English. I mean, she used the word "pontificate," which several of us had to discuss the meaning of later. However, my favorite part was how it was 75 and she was sweating. SWEATING. Anyway, she took us just down the street:

This is the Notre Dame Basillica. It was the largest chapel in North America until New York took over in 1829.

All sorts of things are interesting about this room, but the only one I really remember is that Celine Dion got married here. Our tour guide said that somehow she was able to get her husband's 30-year-four-children marriage annulled so she could do it. Meanwhile, our tour guide, a devout, rule-following Catholic, was turned down when she applied. *headscratch*

We ventured all over Oldtown and learned the following things about the area that I found noteworthy:

• Montreal folk consider themselves French. Interesting.
• The city is made up of 3.9 million
• Every school child finishes 6th grade speaking French and English
• The city is an island 33 miles East to West and 11 miles North to South
• It's the 2nd largest French-speaking city in the world (after Paris)
• Canada is the 2nd largest country in the world but only has 36 million people.    

Oh, and the little fences on top of the buildings? For keeping snow and ice from killing people. That's what she said. People die every year from falling snow and ice, as they have 6 months of straight snowfall.

After the tour, the afternoon "was ours" as they said, so we found a quaint little restaurant for lunch. Couldn't pronounce the name, but it was French and delicious.

 This was Meal #8 and the first one we paid for. On the last day. Pretty awesome!

I ordered this delicious sandwich with a poached egg, French potatoes, and salad, and Husband ordered this:

Apparently, French mac-and-cheese is da bomb.

We stopped at a souvenir shop to pick up gifts for the kids and on the way back to the hotel, people were getting married. Awww.

We napped a bit (we were getting up the next morning and catching our limo at 345 AM, after all) and we met in the lobby for appetizers and yet another cocktail hour at 530. Then we walked down to the dock and boarded our dinner cruise.

It was pretty fancy-pants.

This is the harbor/port/bay/whatever the correct term is where we docked.

Dinner was delicious, and of course free (Meal #9), including an open bar (see me with my Shirley Temple?). Husband snapped this picture when I wasn't paying attention and we both thought it was funny.

We passed under a cool bridge with an amusement park in the background:

And we enjoyed the crazy-good finger picking of this French guitarist, who played Clapton, Journey, Tom Petty - basically all of Husband's jam, including "Dust in the Wind" (at which point we called him over to tell him we were from Kansas, which he dug.) Husband slipped him a $20 afterward, which I felt was more than reasonable, especially considering the fact that we paid exactly $0 for this whole event.

Somehow I didn't take pictures of the hors 'devours (salmon and bruschetta) or the salad (arugula and some other green I didn't recognize) or the main course (filet mignon), but I did manage dessert:

Not sure what this is exactly, but it was yummy and the blueberries were somehow stuffed with chocolate.

The pièce de résistance was the fireworks show. Apparently in Montreal, every Wednesday and Saturday they have a fireworks show over the river and different countries compete. This was Spain's show, and it was better than any 4th of July show I have ever seen.

After dinner we walked back to the hotel, where we were in bed by midnight, which hardly helped since we were up three hours later, but it was a small price to pay for being back home by 10 AM.

What a wonderful trip! Husband and I both agree we need to go back and take the kids when they are older...although Husband was quick to remind me that we have been living the high life on the company's dime and next time it would be on our own. I suggested he just keep up the good work and maybe we can make this trip an annual thing ;)