Thanksgiving in Montreal...

Well, this year we decided to do something different for Thanksgiving and take the kids up to Montreal for an "international" experience.

It was definitely an experience!

On Wednesday we drove from home to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It was about 250 miles and about 5 hours driving. We hit one snow storm on the way, but it didn't slow us down too much.

The boys were SO excited about getting to use their passports for the first time. The Canadian Border patrol was nice enough to stamp their passports even though it wasn't necessary. (I'll post some pictures when I find my camera cord).

Montreal roads are VERY confusing! Very long french named streets and poor signage! We kept getting lost and that's rather unusual for us - we're normally very good about reading maps and getting where we want to without trouble. It was rather frustrating.

Wednesday evening we just relaxed in the hotel and went swimming. (The kids LOVED that part).

Thursday (Thanksgiving day) we went to the Biodome in Montreal. It's a very large and incredible indoor museum with 5 different ecosystems. We loved it!

We then went down to the old town Montreal and got REALLY frustrated with their roads, parking, and less than pleasant hecklers. Our first attempt at parking ended up in a tight spot at a parking garage where it was literally a bumper to bumper tight squeeze. Some guy yelled at me so I turned around (a nice 6 point turn) and promptly left. The second attempt we circled around this town block several times trying to get into the parking lot. When we finally got in the lot, this really nice lady gave us her parking ticket with several hours still valid on it (that's all we really needed). We thought - that's a great deal, the people here aren't too bad. Then the scariest looking bum guy came up to us and started heckling us about not paying for parking. I told him that I have a valid parking ticket for this lot good until 7pm (it was only about 3:00 at the time). He kept saying that I needed to pay at the machine for a new ticket (even though, the ticket I had was valid - not specific to any car). Rich and I both got the same "this man is creepy and evil, let's get out of here vibe" and we left! He really creeped us out and the kids too! The third attempt at parking we found a more secure lot down the street and when we went to pay in the machine it said that it was going to cost 2 canadian dollars per 15 minutes, 19 canadian dollars for daytime parking, or 8 canadian dollars for evening parking that started after 4pm. So here's the new dilemma. It's now about 3:30pm. Do we pay the stupid over-priced 19 canadian dollars to park for just the 2 hours we want to spend walking around the old town Montreal or do we wait 30 minutes until it's after 4pm and pay only 8 canadian dollars? Well, being rather frustrated by this point we were going to bag it all and just go back to the Hotel, but we knew this would probably be our only visit to Montreal (not so impressed to come back when there's a whole world of other places to explore), so we went back to the car and ate a snack and waited in the car until 4pm. Finally we paid for parking and were off to see the old town.

It was bitterly cold (only to be expected in Canada at the end of November), but luckily we were prepared with hats, glove, coats, scarves - the winter gear. By the time we walked the couple of blocks to reach the points of interest, it was dusk and hard to see much! They did have some lights up around some of the old cobblestone streets and there were some fun shops to walk around in. However, being really prepared for winter with all of the winter gear presented another problem when in the shops trying to maneuver around without knocking something over. Yikes!

Anyway, we survived our little jaunt around the old town and were done within an hour and a half. We were able to give our parking ticket away to a nice woman - without any hecklers!

We had our Thanksgiving dinner at "Scores" a bright and cheery restaurant with a big chicken for it's logo. I had roasted chicken, Rich had "Texan" kabobs, Jordan had Linguine, and Trevor had chicken tenders. Not quite the traditional Thanksgiving meal, but we were glad to be together and we went around during dinner taking turns telling about things we were thankful for. It was fun to see what things we are thankful for that you don't always think about. For example... Boogers - they catch the yucky stuff that tries to get into your body!

We ended the night with swimming and a movie on Rich's computer.

Friday we drove home! It's always nice to come home!

Our trip was a good learning experience. When traveling with kids to a new place, keep the activities simple and plan the time spent somewhere to their attention span. Don't plan on "nice" meals - they'll just order the chicken tenders whether it's at BK or at a really nice restaurant. Always stay somewhere with a pool! If you're going somewhere where you want time to leisure and time to relax - don't bring the kids.

Thanksgiving in Montreal sounds glamorous, but I think next year I'm going to just stay at home and relax!