We arrived in Montreal around midday and just headed out to wander around. We had a couple of articles and some ideas of streets to explore but no really clear idea of where to go. Which can be fun. We were staying in the old quarter, which was lovely but not really what we wanted to see, so we initially just headed up St. Laurent. Going that way you first hit the Chinese quarter, where we had lunch at Pho Cali, which was pretty good.

As you continue up St. Laurent, it gets kind of sketchy and red-lightish, but once you cross Sherbrooke, there are lots of boutiques and restaurants. We passed the infamous Schwartz’s of smoked-meat fame, which we didn’t manage to eat at this trip. We did stumble across a european grocery called “La Vielle Europe” which had impressive selections of cheese, meats, coffee, and chocolate — we weren’t able to escape without some salami and chocolate “for later”. After that we went in and out of several boutiques along the street, including m0851 and a place called U&I, where E tried on some great shoes. We eventually walked over to St. Denis and back to the hotel that way, not stopping a whole lot but enjoying the variety from block to block.

That night we had dinner reservations at Au Pied de Cochon, which I’ll review separately.

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