We had credit with Cirque du Soleil to use up, so we ended up in another French speaking country just two weeks after coming back from France.
It’s lovely being able to drive to another country – we went up through the Newport entrance at the top of I91 in Vermont. That part of their Highway 10 was blanketed in what I assume was goutweed. Just a sea of white on the sides of the road. I ended up driving into Montreal, which if you know me, is an accomplishment – I’m not the best with big cities. Although really, the main thing with Montreal is avoiding the bus lane. I wouldn’t want to touch the Old City with a 10 foot pole, but the gridded portion of the city is pretty sane.
The Cirque show was their newest show, Echo, and we got front row seats. Which was pretty cool. At a couple points, the action was going on over us.
Per our usual, we did the Montreal Botanical Garden on one day. The peonies were the star of the show this time. A couple of the pictures above are from the Chinese Garden, but most of them are from the Flowery Brook, which was lovely. We actually managed to do the whole loop through the arboretum this time, and yet we still have some gardens left to see.
On our other full day, we headed out to the Jean Talon market, and back through Little Italy and Mile End. It’s a real shame we can’t bring live plants back over the border. Or maybe not – I could have easily filled the trunk with plants from the market.
Even with the border crossing restrictions, I did manage to bring back a fair amount of odd ball teas, jams and/or spices from Quebec that in some cases I could get around here, but apparently our native tribes didn’t bother to share were edible, or my ancestors just ignored them.
It was a nice weekend away, and again, just nice to be traveling again, even if the crossing back inexplicably took a full hour, for no apparent reason. (Better than the time we went through on Memorial Day, at least.)