May 28, 2010

Montreal overnight

This month I am a line holder at work. A very Junior line holder. While this is good, it means that I hold trips that no one else wants. My trips consist of a lot of Canada overnights. Now, don't get me wrong... I love Canada! Heck, I am dating a Canadian. However, the Canada we see on our trips as crew members is really not so great and does not represent the cities we stay in. A lot of our hotels are around the airport with not a lot to do. (Take our Montreal hotel where the big thing to do is walk to the Ikea for dinner...)

So, Imagine my pure happiness when on my 20 hour overnight in Montreal, my flight attendant friend Jenn from twitter offered to take me out and show me her city. If you haven't "met" Jenn you can hear here on The Crew Lounge, check out her blog here or follow her twitter here!

Jenn is wonderful, I had such a good time spending the day with her! I knew we were going to have a great day when she called before picking me up and asked me what I was wearing. I would totally do this too!

Our first stop was at St. Joseph's Oratory (a Roman Catholic church) which sits on the slope of Mount Royal.



The basilica is dedicated to Saint Joseph, to whom Brother André credited all his reported miracles. These were mostly related to some kind of healing power, and many pilgrims (handicapped, blind, ill, etc.) poured into his Basilica, including numerous Protestants. On display in the basilica is a wall covered with thousands of crutches from those who came to the basilica and were healed. Pope John Paul II deemed the miracles to be authentic and beatified Brother André in 1982. (from Wikipedia)







Next we drove around downtown, Jenn introduced me to my new favorite clothing store in Canada (Jacob).
We eventually got hungry and she took me for the best poutine in montreal. (Poutine if you haven't tried it is basically french fries, gravy and cheese curds. Soooo good.)


I also tried Spruce beer.


We stopped for a Tim Horton's coffee and headed up to the top of Mont Royal to check out the views from the lookout spot. This is said to be the best view of the city and by how gorgeous it was, I believe it. :)





I had a wonderful time in Montreal, know a little more about the city and got to get out and explore with one really amazing person as well! Thanks Jenn!!! :)

3 comments:

stephen said...

so where did you find that poutine, eh?

Unknown said...

I must say that Montreal is one of my very favorite cities....and poutine! smiles.

Fly The Friendly Skies said...

stephen, i am going to have to ask Jenn on this one. I forgot to take a photo of the outside of the building so I could remember. oops. :)