Good times, good times. Montreal is a delightful city. It cares a great deal about good food, which is always endearing. Not only was everyone friendly, but unlike Parisians the French-speaking urbanites in Montreal didn’t sneer at this English-speaker or his lame attempts to parlez-vous. I must say it isn’t as pretty as I thought/hoped it would be. Quebec City is adorable and we thought Montreal would have more old world charm. I should also say I thought it felt oddly under-populated. I love city-walking and I think I’m pretty good at reading cities. And it just seemed eerily quiet in big chunks of the city. It also seemed hard to compute that all of these restaurants could be sustained by the street and pedestrian traffic. Indeed, there was very, very little auto-traffic. At our hotel, the front desk told me a restaurant was a “very, very long walk” away or a five to ten minute cab ride. In New York City or even DC a five to ten minute cab right usually translates into about a half hour walk. In Montreal it seemed to translate into an hour walk.
Anyway, we liked it a great deal and hope to go back some day sooner rather than later.