re: Montreal, in summer

Mont Royal is great, there’s a bus route that takes you up to the trailhead/lookout. I would’ve alotted more time there in retrospect as we didn’t have much time to walk the trails.

Montreal Botanical Gardens nearby the Olympic Stadium complex are pretty awesome and a short walk from the metro, not sure what it would be like to visit in the summer.

The metro system is awesome, we took the bus route from the airport and crossed over to the underground metro at a later station. Underground + bus system makes everything super walkable.

Brasserie Dieu du Ciel! is the most heralded brewery in the city if you’re into that sort of thing, kind of a cafe-style taproom with some outdoor seating. Highly recommend it.

One of the best recommended food spots was a little Portuguese chicken shop called Ma Poule Mouillée, the poutine we got there was delicious (especially after spending all day traveling in the rain). Apparently they just reopened after a fire.

In general, most of the places we went to eat at without reservations had a long wait that stretched outside the restaurant, including La Poule. La Banquise is right across the street and is well regarded for their poutine, and we saw that the line was probably twice as long. Probably the worst for this was at Schwartz’s Deli, which I could’ve done without.

I actually wasn’t blown away by Joe Beef, but maybe a factor was that I found it hot as hell in there for some reason. Enough people love it that I’d be willing to give it another go on a future visit.

A place we really liked was a tapas place called Tapeo that I think was recommended by our Air BnB host. Would definitely make reservations there again.