Bonjour Montréal (Part III)

Time to finish up my three part series of posts about the trip my sister and I took a couple weeks ago to  Montréal, Québec, Canada. Please see posts for Bonjour Montréal! (Part I) and Bonjour Montréal (Part II) for the rest of the story.

THE VEGAN SUSHI EXPERIMENT

I love sushi but I rarely eat raw fish sushi, just the sushi rolls with smoked or cooked fish; or vegetarian rolls. Well while in  Montréal we discovered VEGAN SUSHI! One night we had dinner at Bloom Sushi and it was the best sushi I’ve ever eaten!

We sort of gorged ourselves on vegan sushi – the flavors were so amazing. (When I returned to Denver I found a vegan sushi place and John and I have since eaten there in downtown Denver twice. Who knew vegan sushi could be so delicious?)

If you are ever in Montréal I highly recommend Bloom Sushi even if you think it sounds weird to eat vegan sushi. In addition to the exquisite food the service was impeccable and the atmosphere was very zen, warm and inviting. My sister and I did not want to leave the place but it was eventually closing for the evening, ha!

NOTRE-DAME BASILICA

One morning we toured the breathtaking Notre-Dame Basilica and here are some of crazy amount of photos I took while we were inside:

Photos do not do it justice, so here is a video walk through I found on YouTube if you’d like to see more. I would say it is a mandatory tourist stop if you visit Montréal, even if you do not care for “churches”.

If you wonder what the massive pipe organ sounds like I found a video of it being played:

The outside was pretty awesome too, here are some photos from when we were on line waiting to get in (with all the other tourists!):

OTHER SIGHTS/ADVENTURES

We wandered the neighborhoods of Old Montréal, Downtown Montréal, Petite Italy, and a little of the Latin Quarter.

We had fun visiting many little shops, neighborhood eateries and bars. Below is an example of some tasty martinis we had.

The people of Montréal were so friendly and helpful. I brought along my terrible high school French and tortured the French-Canadians with it. Nearly everyone also spoke English so we got by just fine. I did get some giggles from my attempt at communicating in French and they quickly redirected me into an English conversation, ha! I did smile when I got mistaken a couple times for a local and the shopkeepers began speaking French to me.

This reminds me of years ago when my late husband Terry and I went to Denmark (to visit a friend); and then onto Amsterdam, Brussels, and Antwerp for a little Belgium beer holiday (we were really into Belgium beers at the time). While in Belgium, Terry a Napoleonic Era history buff, really wanted to visit Waterloo (Napoleon’s last stand). From Brussels we had to take a bus and then a train to Waterloo and NO ONE along the way spoke English, it was an all French speaking region of Belgium. I had to definitely pull out the very rusty high school French.

When we got on the bus first to get to the train, Terry and I could not sit together on the bus as there were only single seats available and so he sat in back. The gentleman sitting next to him spoke to him in French (Terry knew like little to no French) nearly the entire bus ride and Terry just kept eye contact and nodded. I kept looking back and saw that the guy seemed to think Terry was his new best friend and had no clue that he was not understanding a word he said! When we got off at our stop the guy wished him well in French and Terry nodded goodbye!

I teasingly asked Terry what they were talking about and he said he did not know but the guy was very chatty and seem to think they were having a very engaging conversation!

Okay so back to my Montréal trip. Bringing out my rusty high school French (which wasn’t even French-Canadian French) brought back that memory!

The best part of the trip was just hanging out with my sister and I look forward to our next sister adventure.

I’ll close this post (and this three part series of posts) with a sign that was out in front of Le Beau Marché where we’d by our groceries, that made me smile: