When in doubt, knock em' around the dasher boards, eh?

     I recently lead a small invasion (read: two of us Yankees) into Montreal to explore our neighbors to the North and eat all of their food. Even though Customs asked me if I worked in illegal retail, we made it into the city pretty easily. We stayed with a lovely Airbnb host downtown and had easy access to the metro and buses, which made exploring the city a breeze. Two notable places we visited were the Old Port (which I imagine would be nicer in warmer weather) and Notre Dame. Montreal's version is completely built with wood in its interior and is worth your time for a paid visit. On our way home, we stopped in Vermont to visit Palmer's Sugar House and Lake Champlain. We tried to visit Magic Hat Brewery, but an area-wide power outage soiled our plans. Good thing we drank so much beer in Canada! 

MONTREAL

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     First we went to Chinatown and ate ALL of the food. We had lunch (a crazy-good banh mi from Hoang Oanh and dumplings), went to Notre Dame, and went back to Chinatown to eat scallion pancakes and shrimp dumplings. 

Afterwords, we had to consider dessert so we selected six or so mochi (the yellow filling is grapefruit!).

That night we had lobster poutine at Garde Manger. I have to say... I wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be. I like the concept of poutine, but the execution makes for some soggy spuds. Thumbs up for some lobstah, though. 

The third day in Montreal was dedicated to finding the best bagels of their kind. After wandering a bit, we managed to find St. Viateur Bagel and purchased an everything (shown here) bagel and sesame, which is traditional. These bagels are less chewy than their NY counterparts and are also sweeter due to the addition of honey to the recipe. 

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The last thing to sample in Montreal was their beer! We technically drank beer our first night in town, but we wanted to find local brews. We were rewarded when we stumbled into a shop that only sold Quebecoise beer. We went with a wickedly hopped dram and a sour beer. Later that night, our host shared some of his favorite beer with us and it was an excellent end to our stay.