2016 - Montreal Summary

Duration: 3 days (left Friday morning, returned on Sunday evening)
Distance Traveled: 1,088 km (544 km each way)
Cost: $875 for the hotel (2 nights, 3 rooms at the Days Inn Montreal), $288 for minivan rental (even though we ended up with a 7 seat SUV), $137 on gas, all divided by 5 people.

Highlights

Notre Dame Basilica, I was surprised that the site actually looked like the pictures that you can find on the internet. The Basilica is a very colourful place and I found that to be quite different from churches that I have visited in the past. Make sure to visit the chapel in the back while you are there.

Notre Dame Basilica - Exterior

Notre Dame Basilica - Interior 

Notre Dame Basilica - Interior

Saint Joseph Oratory, I feel a bit disappointed in this one since we visited Notre Dame first, if we swapped it, it might be a bit different. I felt that this place was just BIG, and it was more modern in decoration by comparison to other churches that I normally visit. I do feel that you should visit it while there though since it is the largest church in Canada.

Saint Joseph's Oratory - Exterior 

Saint Joseph's Oratory - Organ 

Saint Joseph's Oratory - Interior

Lowlights

No complaints about the sites that were visited.

Food suggestions

I think that in general, all the food ranged from good to really good, so I'll just cover the ones that I think are worth a visit in the order that we went to them.

Moishes is a really old steakhouse in Montreal and worth a visit if you are willing to wait until 9pm. At 9pm, they have a 3 hour happy hour that ends at midnight where you get an appetizer, entree, and tea/coffee for only $25. Have a look at their site for the menu, but for $25, the value that you get I feel is very very good. This was our first actual meal here and I thought it was really good at the time and definitely worth a stop if you can. You get free coleslaw, bread, and pickles as well. The servers were good, water was filled, table was cleaned between courses.

Moishes - Salmon tartare 

Moishes - Rib steak and potato

Liverpool House is the sister restaurant of Joe Beef and was opened since they were so popular here. Mike, when making reservations, only had the option of 5:30pm or 9:30pm for a Saturday and I believe this was 2 weeks before, so do plan accordingly. The service was really good here, all table items were switches between courses, water was never empty of long or at all. I found the music to be a bit loud on the bar side, but I assume it is fine on the other side. The food was really good here and even though it is pricier, I thought that it wasn't too crazy for what you get, especially since the portions were fairly big.

Liverpool House - Oysters 

Liverpool House - Croquettes 

Liverpool House - Horse tartare 

Liverpool House - Steak 

Liverpool House - Lobster spaghetti

What would I change?

I don't really have any issue with how things worked out for us. I wish that we had a hotel which had parking included, but I believe that that is rare in downtown Montreal.

Tips

You can park on the streets overnight at the public street parking spots, just make sure to read the hours correctly. We couldn't figure it out ourselves and we always just resorted to paying for underground parking. Note that vandalism and theft of cars is actually pretty high here, so it probably was worth paying for parking.

Final thoughts

Montreal is the food place to visit in all of Canada. There are several articles that talk about this and after this trip, I would agree that it is true. I normally don't travel for food, so it was a different experience and I'm glad that Mike was able to plan out the food stop like he normally does.

Thanks for a great weekend guys, hope you all enjoyed reading about our Montreal experience even if I did exclude certain things!