What an adventure today was! We drove to St Viateur for bagels, a 24 hour bagel shop. Even now, it still baffles me that they have a market where offering just fresh bagels 24 hours a day is a sustainable business model. They’ve been in business since 1957, so they must be doing something right! We purchase the bagels, and drove to Mount Royal to consume them at the picnic benches by the parking lot there. I actually brought with me a bagel knife, plates, and a large tub of cream cheese from Toronto. My brother had an accident with the bagel knife, and cut his finger, so we packed everything up right away, rushed to a local WalMart for some bandages, and a new case of water.
Right afterwards, we all drove back to Mount Royale, to scale the top of the mountain.
I drove everyone to Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal to see the cane Shrine. It was a very big church. I was too tired, so I just stayed in the car to take a nap for a bit.
Afterwards, I drove my brother to a local coffee roaster to pick up a pack of local beans. He actually took his coffee kit with him from back home. We brewed a cup of fresh coffee that night. It was quite good. It had a very nice chocolatey flavor to it, with hints of berries that lingers. I really liked it!
In the past, I was always told to go to Schwartz for their Montreal smoked meats. I was very disappointed after lining up for a long time for some over-priced sandwich in some dingy cafe that apparently hasn’t been renovated since 1988! So yeah, I never went back. This time, I was told on good authority that Lester’s was a hidden gem that the locals go to for proper smoked meat. So that is where I went. The nice guy behind the counter actually recommended that I purchase just 1 lb of smoked meats, and half a loaf of bread instead of buying several pre-made sandwiches, to save money. I actually upped the 1 lb, to 1.5 pounds, and consumed the whole amount at a local park. Everybody was very satisfied with the food, and I don’t think I would think twice about visiting this restaurant for future visits! I actually got everything as a takeout, and ate at a park that was actually a block away!
Since the bagel shop was literally a block away from the smoked meat shop, we purchased another dozen bagels from them for the roadtrip to Quebec City the next day that afternoon. Can you believe that they were busier than they were that morning?!
For the final destination of the Montreal leg of this road trip, I decided to try and explore a part of the RESO underground city. Unfortunately, everybody was super tired, and wasn’t up to walking too much, so we had to cut the trip short, and drove back to the hotel.
I will definitely be visiting the RESO again when I come back in the future. I will be dedicating more time to explore by myself.
So far, everybody has been quite impressed with my gourmet choices and suggestions in Montreal. I am a little apprehensive about tomorrow, since I only spent a very small amount of time in Quebec city, and I actually never had a proper meal in a restaurant there. But we seemed to have filled our itinerary, so I hope everything goes smoothly just like the past few days without too much hiccup.