Bienvenue a Montreal

I was sad to say bye to the Toronto Kids, as we affectionately called them. But it was time to head to the other side to see the other relatives including Sofia & Ava’s Great-Grandparents. 5 hour drive later we were in Montreal where everything is primarily in Canadian French. We got to the house where, you guessed it, homemade Filipino food was waiting for us when we arrived. We spent most of the time stretching our legs and visiting. We were just waiting for Jay’s cousins to arrive with their daughter Ella. Sofia and Ava were so excited to finally meet their (2nd) cousin! It was as if they were separated at birth. The three girls were instantly best friends. They spent a lot of time with each other during our visit and they were sad to leave her behind.


The first night in Montreal, Jay’s cousins Greg (Ella’s Dad) & Jenny and their spouses Irish (Ella’s Mom) & Jay took us out to downtown Montreal where we had a very lovely time at an Italian restaurant where we had desserts and drinks outside on the terrace and people watched and enjoyed catching up with them. It was Monday night and you would have thought it was Saturday of a 4 day weekend, it was so happening. It’s so nice because they are all our age so we all had so much to talk about and again, more laughing all night long. Montreal summers are famous for all of their festivals and last time I came, the Grand Prix festival was going on. I was so bummed to find out that our visit to Montreal was IN BETWEEN the famous Jazz Festival and the Just for Laughs Festival…I need to plan better next time! Since I had been here before, the cousins asked what I wanted to do. Last time we took an all day tour of the city, so I really got to do a lot of things. So the only thing that I wanted to do again was visit Old-Montreal.

I just love the cobblestone streets and how European it felt, so we took the girls down there where we walked around, took photos, bought souvenirs and ate at an amazing outdoor restaurant called Jardin Nelson. It was scrumptious! Several pitchers of Melon Sangrias later coupled with the heat made us lazy and happy! We had to get back to the house to freshen up because guess what? More eating! This time it was going to be all of the Montreal relatives (16 of us total) out to dinner at the Baton Rouge restaurant. Part of the reason we don’t take the kids out to fancy dinners back home was all exemplified and amplified at this dinner. Both of the girls…wait…all three of the girls were throwing tantrums in the restaurant. I spent most of my time outside with Ava running her up and down the street to get out all of her pent up energy. Sofia fell asleep in the restaurant. Jay & I and Greg & Irish all looked so deflated. It was very hard to enjoy the wonderful rib dinner. That night Greg & Irish told us that we would be spending the night at their house so that we could enjoy some of the creature comforts that we were missing from home - including a huge play room with toys that the girls could go crazy with. It was like going to a spa, their home was so beautiful, had that new home smell, and we were all so totally relaxed.






We decided from that point on that the rest of the trip was going to be focused on the kids. We discussed going to a mini water park the next day, so we shopped for bathing suits for the girls. We were all so excited then morning came and oops….rain city! Luckily Montreal has ‘weather’…so they have indoor play grounds, so we went to Fundomundo and let the girls play while the adults drank cappuccinos and cookies. Afterwards we went to a mall and walked around for awhile and ate at the food court (felt like I was at home), aside from the fact that I got to eat Poutine again! After a few more stop offs like Second Cup, we were back at the beautiful house. What was waiting for us? All of the relatives, home cooked meals brought to Greg & Irish’s house, so we were on food overload and conversation overload as we visited with all of the relatives again. After everyone left and the girls were asleep, the four of us just talked all night long; it was wonderful. We talked about them coming out to San Diego next year and maybe leaving the kids with grandparents and sneaking out to Vegas for a weekend. Good times.