honeymoon - day 1

I think we were tired. Maybe it was the one hour of sleep before a handful of cross-country and international flights. Maybe it was the eight months of wedding planning. Whatever the cause, when we finally made it to our hotel in Montréal, Amanda and I slept for 16 hours. We missed our first complimentary breakfast. We missed our first two windows of opportunité to have our room made-up by housekeeping. By the time we finally managed to wake up and get ready to face the cold, we'd managed to miss the morning as well as the 3 or 4 PM closing time for many of the touristy things here in Old Montréal.

Bundled from head to toe in snow clothes, the Mrs. and I headed out into Vieux-Montréal to take in The Basilique de Notre-Dame, the city's catholic basilica and a beautiful piece of architecture.



We wandered around inside for a while, warming up and apparently offending God by keeping our winter hats on. Basilica staff later scolded us for this. There are some odd pictures hanging on the walls inside the basilica. They all depict the savior of the indiginous Native population of Canada being saved/educated/warmly greeted by the good God-fearing missionaries of the first Canadian settlers.



After warming up, snapping some pictures, and blasphemously squeaking our snowy shoes through the reverent halls of the basilica, we set off into the city again - this time to find a bite to eat.

4:30 PM is a weird time to try and eat in Vieux-Montréal in the winter. Most lunch places had closed and most dinner places hadn't openned yet. Luckily for us, we found a great café called Olive+Gourmando. The inside was cozy, the atmosphere was hip French-Canadian, and the food was delicious.



I had a ham panini with chipotle mayo. Manda had cream of cauliflower soup and what she tells me was "the most delicious bread (she's) ever eaten." Afterwards we had a hot chocolate and an "extraordinaire brownie" that was truly extraordinaire.

We spent the rest of the evening takin in Old Montréal on foot. Old Montréal is beautiful. It feels simultaneously very Old World European and Modern Art friendly.





We went down to the Centre Du Science de Montréal, past a frozen section of the St. Lawrence River that people were ice skating on, up into Montréal proper and the Place D'Armes Metro stop where we both struggled with fuzzy french class lessons of whether the French word for "map" was masculine or feminine (we never quite figured it out).



By the time we made it back to the hotel, our feet were sore and our faces were frozen but we'd had a great day, taken some great pictures, and were ready for the warmth of our pajamas.