Commencing the journey from Montreal to Nova Scotia
Coming back to Montreal in summer is like going to a familiar yet new place. I remember carefully trying to manoeuvre the icy cobble stone road leading from Place d’Armes Metro station up to Notre Dame Cathedral with my massive backpack and a trolley in winter as I’m now heading up there again, this time sweating away in 29 degrees Celsius and shorts. The backpack is as heavy as ever but the city has changed entirely.
Montreal in January was winter wonderland. People were covered in layers and layers of clothes, big winter jackets and boots. The streets and houses, in fact the entire city was covered in snow. And still more snow was adding to the thick carpet. In the pubs, people would get in shuddering from the cold and shaking off the snow. The lake in Parc de la Fontaine had frozen over and I stood right where I’m standing now, at the time watching people doing more or less sophisticated loops with their ice skates.
Now the park is green instead of white. People are sunbathing and chatting on blankets around it. The terraces out front the pubs on Rue St. Denis, one of the liveliest streets in Montreal’s Plateau, are heaving with people wearing t-shirts and sunglasses. The cobbled roads of the old town, Vieux Montreal, are filled with tourists sipping coffees and taking pictures, cameras hanging around their necks. And the Old Port, Montreal’s old harbour has come to live with an adventure park, a zip line across the harbour as well as food stalls and seating areas.
If I had to choose which face of Montreal I like more, I’d find it very difficult to do. I like winter wonderland just as much as I like the buzzing summertime city. Montreal has a great vibe. It might not have Toronto’s CN Tower and lakefront but it has a lot of charm with its bilingual population, little alleyways of Old Montreal, Mount Royal – a hill in the middle of the city that invites for hiking in summer and skiing in winter – as well a large variety of pubs, bars and restaurants.
But this time, I haven’t just come to explore. I need to get my travels planned and I need to find a dentist – urgently. Just what you need after a week of travelling. Luckily, although I only spent three days in total in Montreal in January, I find my way around easily. Within a day, the friendly Dr. Wendy Fox at Clinique Dentaire de Vieux Montreal fixes my teeth, I get a SIN number sorted and I am meeting two potential travel buddies.
Just before leaving for Montreal, I put up an ad in kijiji.ca to see if any fellow travellers would like to join me on my trip to Nova Scotia. Two guys got in touch, and I am meeting one of them in a café just around the corner from the hostel and the other one down by the busy riverfront. They are both very nice but I don’t feel like there is enough chemistry for a ten-day trip to Nova Scotia. Slightly disappointed, I make my way back to the hostel and sit down in the colourful kitchen with a fresh mint tea to reconsider my options. I have stayed at the Auberge Alternative du Vieux-Montréal in January and I really like the place. Situated in Montreal’s pretty old town, it’s a cosy and low-priced hostel with a very nice crowd, a large but very comfy communal area and free, fresh herbal teas as well as great coffee on offer all day.
The drive to Halifax from Montreal takes 12 hours and I don’t want to drive there all by myself. I am just about to book a bus to Rivière-du-Loup, 200 km North of Quebec City, and another one to Halifax in Nova Scotia when I receive a text from Lisa, who would like to join my trip. Shortly after, a guy named John responds to my ad and offers a rideshare for Lisa and me from Montreal to Moncton in the province of New Brunswick, which is also a 12 hour drive from Montreal and just a short way from Nova Scotia. This comes in very handy so Lisa and I happily agree to leave with John for Moncton the day after next. Relieved and content about the sudden but overdue concretisation of my travels to Nova Scotia, I head out for a few beers at L’Amère A Boire, one of the local microbreweries with Melanie who I met in Toronto.
The next morning, just when I am about to meet Lisa, I receive a text from John saying that he had to cancel his trip from Moncton and with that, our ride. Our time to go to Nova Scotia is running out fast so Lisa and I decide to rent a car on the spot. And just a couple of hours later, after the quickest packing-and-lunch combination of my trip to date, we are heading for Rivière-du-Loup on the busy highways of Montreal. Nova Scotia here we come!
Tips for food and beer lovers in Montreal:
- The must-have food in Quebec is Poutine. It’s fries with gravy and cheese. La Banquise is a 24h restaurant serving different variants of Poutine. The restaurant is on the Auberge Alternative’s list of things to do in Quebec and it has also been highly recommended to me by a fellow traveller. Apparently Poutine is also the best hangover cure!
- L’Amère A Boire on Rue St. Denis is a great local microbrewery serving beers brewed according to different styles e.g. German, Czech, Belgium and English. Other local microbreweries are:
