Sightseeing Montreal

It was 4:20 AM and I was feeling great.
But since I'm on vacation, I naturally stayed in bed a bit longer, played around on my phone, and started writing the blog. The Wi-Fi here is fantastic.
Slowly but surely, the rest of the travel group woke up and we arranged to meet at the hotel foyer at 9:00 AM.
Driven by hunger, we set off in bright sunshine towards Eggspection. It’s a chain of breakfast bars here and I highly recommend it. Delicious, affordable, good service, large portions, and whether you like savory, sweet, or regular, there's something for everyone.
From Eggspection, we headed towards the Old Town. On the way, I glanced to the left and saw a huge bird.
Hey, isn’t that the one from Ice Age?
And Mücke could name it right away. A Dodo. Of course, we went over there, walked around, read why it's standing there, and continued on to Notre-Dame Montreal.
It does bear some resemblance to the one in Paris, I’d say. We explored the Place d'Armes in front with its fountain and the strange statues of the English Pug and the French Poodle, and then decided to take a self-guided tour through Notre-Dame. It’s already impressive from the outside but quite unassuming, but inside 😳 wow.
A truly beautiful basilica. A visit is highly recommended. But see for yourself 😉

Once outside, we noticed a beverage market. We were actually looking for something more 'normal', but after Andi and Mücke came out with big grins and each holding a can of Fürstenberg, Jörg and I had to go in too. They actually had Fübi on offer. Greetings here to Sholly. Now I had three happy men in tow. Finally, a decent beer 😂
From the Place d'Armes, we continued towards the harbor with detours into various tourist shops. We took a spin past the Grande Roue de Montréal, the tallest Ferris wheel in Canada at 60 meters, and continued to the Tour de l'Horloge, a clock tower commemorating the sailors who died in World War I. It’s supposed to be publicly accessible, but it was unfortunately closed when we were there.
From there, we headed back to the Old Town. We strolled through the Marche Bonsecours, a former market hall that still has a few shops, a nice building, but otherwise nothing special, and continued to the Pub St. Paul. A nice Irish pub where we lingered for a round or two. An Old Town Mule was enough for me; it really packed a punch 😅
Earlier, while wandering through the Old Town, Mückmann and I had discovered one of the four gates to Chinatown. That’s where we wanted to go now. Said and done. Chinatown Montreal borders the Old Town and has four gates, of which we saw three, but otherwise, there's really no highlight. At least we avoided a zombie apocalypse like in Vancouver 😅 A few were milling about at the entrance gate, but it was nowhere near as bad as Hastings Street.
Without detours, we headed to the NHL Store in Place du Canada. The jersey that Andi had desperately searched for on the last trip was here, and Andi was happy, end of story.
Now it was back towards the hotel. Well, thanks to construction, we had to go one block up and bam, we were at Victoria 🤷🏼‍♀️😇 Since the guys had already mentioned going for one at the pub around the corner from the hotel, I said: you go ahead, I'm going shopping. And so our paths diverged. They went to the pub, I went shopping 🤷🏼‍♀️ After Victoria, I made my way to the Eaton Center Montreal. I must say, it was okay, but I prefer the one in Toronto. At least I managed to snag some highly sought-after Pokémon cards for Mücke and add to Zicki's Starbucks cup collection. By now a bit hungry, I made my way back. And still in my ear was Andi’s: our hotel is by the church with the green roof. Well, just check out the pictures of the churches here and what color their roofs are 🙄😂 I ended up walking about a kilometer past the hotel 😂 When I finally found the hotel, I quickly went to the room, put away my purchases, propped my feet up for 10 minutes, and then headed over to the pub. My ordered small cola turned out to be half a liter 🙈 But I had the honor of unpacking the Pokémon cards together with Mücke. A highlight, I tell you 😂
The question of what we wanted to eat was discussed, and Mücke said pizza would be great. Just 120m from the pub, we found a highly-rated pizzeria. And it really must be good. I wanted to go, but there was a line to get in. And it was quite a long one. Okay, we googled further and lo and behold, another 300m away was Osteria mkt. Since I had passed it on my shopping tour, located behind a church with a green roof😉, we knew right where to go.
As soon as we stepped inside, our jackets were taken. We were then nicely led to our table, and it immediately became clear to us, oh no, farmers in a fancy place. But it was too late. A brief discussion arose, should we leave? Jörg, who had already studied the menu and made his decision, wanted to stay, I didn’t care, and after Andi took a sip of the water that was already on the table, the decision was made 😂 I think we loosened the place up a bit. The staff kept coming over for small talk, the food was truly excellent, and since on the way back no one wanted to go to McDonald's or Burger King, I think everyone left satisfied.
So, if you want good Italian food, head to Osteria mkt. Although judging by the line at Pizza II Focolaio, it must be good there too, but unfortunately, we couldn’t verify it ourselves.
After the meal, we went for one more at the Irish pub by the hotel, and that was it. 23,427 steps are enough, I think.

Oh, and also here, several mirrors with Fürstenberg advertisements. The gentlemen feel almost at home 😁