Team Towner: Cliff, Gina, Laura & Nathan: Vacation-Bienvenue à Montréal!!

After the wedding festivities ended in Vermont, we headed north for our Canadian adventure. It was so cool that as soon as we crossed the border, everything (street signs, business signs, etc.) was in French. I was in heaven!! I was very grateful for my knowledge of French, because even with that, it was still a bit challenging to drive in a place where the road signs are not in English (not to mention deciphering the speed limit written in kilometers!). We got to Montréal and found our rental apartment. It was exactly as advertised on the rental website, and the owners (who live just downstairs) are so friendly and helpful. Per the suggestions they left in the apartment, we walked down the alley by the building and went to dinner at La Boulette, a trendy new gourmet burger place just a 2 minute walk from our apartment.

Sitting outside La Boulette on the sidewalk terrace, waiting for our food to come.

Silly little man ready for his dinner.

My dinner, a lamb burger with goat cheese, lettuce, tomato and carmelized onions and a mix of regular and sweet potato fries. Soooooooooo good!!!!

The next morning, we were ready to get out and explore. We took the bus (the bus stop was a 5 min. walk from the apartment) several blocks down the street to the nearest Métro subway station. We bought 3-day passes, and we were ready to go!

Waiting on the platform for her very first subway ride!

We arrived at our destination, Espace Pour La Vie (Space for Life) located at Olympic Park, and we paid for tickets to 2 of the attractions there, the Jardin Botanique (Botanical Garden) and Biodôme. Since it was so gorgeous out, we decided it was best to start in the gardens.

Ready to head into the Jardin Botanique.

The Québecois flag. We noticed pretty quickly that this flag was more commonly seen than the Canadian national flag. The Québecois are very proud of their provincial heritage.

We lucked into such a great thing. It turns out that Mosaïquecultures Internationales de Montréal, a horticultural sculpture contest/exhibit, had just opened a week or two before we got there. This contest/exhibit takes place in different countries all over the world, and it hadn't been in Montréal in about 10 years. There were nearly 50 amazing sculptures that were submitted from all over the world. They were just beautiful, and many of them were quite intricate.

The first sculpture we spotted.

The Man Who Planted Trees; this one was one of my favorites.

In addition to the sculpture exhibit, the garden's regular offerings were lovely. We visited the Rose Garden and the Japanese Gardens. There are also Chinese Gardens and an Arboretum, but we ran out of time for those; the sculptures were so good, we spent most of our time on those.

Literally stopping to smell the roses.

Lemur exhibit from Madagascar. "I like to move it, move it."

Beautiful lily pads.

More great sculptures:

Fragile Frogs, an entry from Atlanta, GA!

After a break for lunch in the garden's lunch stand (which, we noted, had much healthier offerings than we would have gotten in a similar setting in the US), we let the kids play on the playground.

More amazing sculptures:

Another favorite, Mother Earth.

We took a break in these great lounge chairs that were located right by a pond.

Ready for a gelato break!

This was our favorite, The Bird Tree. It is Montréal's own entry to the competition, and the picture does not even do it justice.

At the Our Home, The Earth exhibit, they taught visitors how to add plants to the sculpture.

The gardens were so good (and big) that we decided to save the Biodôme ticket for another day. We headed back home on the subway, stopped at the local market to pick up some goodies for dinner back at the apartment (fresh pea pods, hummus, tabbouleh salad, cherry tomatoes....mmmmm).