Canada. It has always been high up on my bucket list of places to go. Being only a 5 hour drive from Boston to Montreal, it’s the perfect little getaway. But somehow, it took me until this summer to get there.
Mason and I were on a trip home to the US to see my family, celebrate his birthday in the sun, and show him what the 4th of July is all about. We decided to squeeze in Canada for 3 days after the 4th celebrations died down. We got up early on the 7th, and started our 6.5 hour journey to Québec.
To get to the eastern part of Canada from Boston, most of the drive is through New Hampshire and Vermont, both extremely pretty in the summer. Mason was amazed at how many mountains and hills there were. (FYI Perth, WA is the flattest place on earth.) Even though driving through the mountains is beautiful, I’m not gonna lie, it gets a little boring looking solely at trees after 6 hours.
When we made it to the border, we were both excited and nervous. We drove up to the window, handed over our passports, answered a few questions (were told that weed is now legal in Canada), and we were off! It was a lot easier than I thought it’d be.
We entered Canada and were instantly reminded that everything would be in French… (Most of Montreal’s street signs are in both French and English, but not so much in Québec.) We navigated our way to the hotel the best we could, learning some French along the way. We checked into “Hōtel Classique”, dropped our bags in the room, and ran down to the restaurant for sushi. After we ate, we grabbed an Uber to Old Québec. We wanted to see as much as we could that afternoon, so we looked up the best places to see, and started crossing them off the list. We walked around for about three hours. We saw Notre-Dame de Québec, Notre-Dame des Victorias, Quartier Petit Champlain, Montmorency Park, and the Fortifications of Québec.
We then decided to stop at a cute little place called “Buffet de L’Antiquiaire” for dinner, and to try some Poutine. Poutine is a traditional Canadian dish of French fries covered in cheese curds and topped with gravy. (A trip to Canada isn’t complete without trying it.) I ordered a large plate to share, and that was MORE than enough for the both of us. After we ate, we headed back to the hotel and crashed.
We got up bright and early the next morning and headed to Parc De La Chute-Montmorency (but not without stopping at Starbucks first!) The waterfall was amazing. It had a bridge to walk across, a gondola ride down the river, a platform at the bottom, and even zip lining across the river! We opted for just a walk across the bridge (as we already paid $12 to park and were trying to keep a low budget). We spent about 30 minutes on the bridge just taking in the view, before jumping in the car and heading to Montreal.
It was about a three hour drive from Québec to Montreal. For lunch we stopped at an A&W, (which I had always thought was only root-beer until then) and I’m not gonna lie, their burgers were actually really good. We continued on our journey and finally made it to Montreal around 3:00PM.
Once in the city, we struggled to find parking. It took us about an hour before we decided to park at the local hospital and hope for the best. We were staying at “Dr. Penfield by Ellegancia”, so the hospital was only about a 10 minute walk away. Once we got to the hotel, we realized that our room hadn’t been cleaned. At this hotel, there isn’t a reception desk, and all of the doors are locked with codes that they send to you in an email when you book with them. I had to call their business number and complain about what happened. Luckily, they put us up in a suite on the third floor for no extra charge!
We were pretty tired from driving around and waiting for our room to be ready, but we decided to head out for dinner anyway. We went to “Sushi Crystal“, an all you can eat sushi restaurant, and we definitely took advantage of it! After our belly’s were full (and our wallets were empty) we walked around downtown for a while. We decided to head back to the hotel to call it an early night.
The next morning, we got up and headed to get the car. We weren’t exactly sure what we wanted to do while in Montreal, so we just started driving. We drove up to Mont Royal to get a good view of the city, then we put the Biosphere into the GPS. We passed the Biosphere, and the next thing we knew, we were driving on the Grand Prix race track. We still have no idea how we ended up on the track, but we drove around it for about 10 minutes before we figured out how to get off.
We were going to head to the Botanical Gardens next, but there was so much construction and road works EVERYWHERE, so we decided to call it a day and start heading home.
Crossing the border back into the US was just as easy as going into Canada; we were just asked a few extra questions on what our plans were while staying in the US.
On our drive home, we stopped for lunch at a BBQ place in Burlington, Vermont, and then stopped at Salisbury beach to soak up the last few hours of sunshine.
Overall, Canada was a great vacation! Both cities were wonderful to visit, but I would definitely recommend Québec over Montreal if you only have a few days in Canada!