Oh! Canada.
Montréal
You might think it’s counterintuitive to start a cross country, east to west road trip by going north, and you’d be right. By starting our journey this way, we certainly added on a few extra days but I can explain the choice in one word, Montréal. And with 35 days to spend getting from New York City to the Bay Area, we had the luxury of cultivating the journey to our liking. I do not regret the decision. Montréal is a beautiful city which feels as much European as it does North American. We were greeted with a friendly “salut comment allez-vous” wherever we went, which quickly became “hello, how are you?” when Nicolas and I were unable to respond in French. The Québecois of Montreal are all bilingual and contrary to my preconceived notion, had no bad feelings about speaking to us in English. We stayed in Old Montréal, where the streets are mostly cobblestone, in an Air BNB that is one of the increasing number of rentals clearly not lived in by any permanent residents. Many plants and quirky touches but none of them personal. This type of rental has more charm but much few amenities than an equivalently priced hotel, so you can pick your pleasure when in a big city.
The biggest highlight of Montréal was the food. We did a self-guided walking tour mostly to try the famous (or infamous) Montréal bagel, which is rumored to be better than a New York bagel. I am not going to take sides in this debate. Good food is good food, so why should we squabble- is something I like to imagine my Yiddish speaking great-grandparents saying. (I never met them so this is a completely fabricated aphorism) We tried the bagels at two different spots, first at St Viateur and then at Fairmount. Both bagels were delicious and very different from a New York bagel. They were thinner and with a larger hole than a NY bagel, resulting in less carb-heavy eating. Which is why you get to eat 2, right?
This image was taken from the NYT article on Montreal vs. NY bagels
Neither of the two bagel shops we visited were especially user-friendly. At the first there were baskets and baskets of bagels but no large tubs of various flavored cream cheeses, as I am accustomed to in New York. There is no where to eat your bagel and they do not slice it for you. If you are so inclined, you can purchase grocery store cream cheese and get weird looks from other customers as you try to slice your bagel with a plastic knife. The second shop was basically the same except it was even less obvious where you were even meant to go to purchase the bagels. They also sell a few other baked goods, like matzoh. The surprise highlight of our food tour turned out to be the everything matzoh we impulsively bought from Fairmount Bagel. We dipped it in our fancy cream cheese and patted ourselves on the back for our impeccable decision making skills.
Bagel stop #1 St Viateur
The scales of justice
Bagel stop #2 Fairmount
We rounded out our mini food tour with some Kem Coba ice cream and a very meat heavy sandwich at Le Roi du Smoked Meat for Nicolas (not pictured).
Eating ice cream as God intended, double fisted
Toronto
Our time in Toronto can best be described as, much walking and silliness, as evidenced by the few photos below.
General goofiness
We stayed in the Kensington Market area which with its similar vibe to Santa Cruz, CA, made me feel right at home. There were a lot of great vegetarian options which I took full advantage of, as we were about to embark on a diagonal trip across the midwest, an area not known for its wild enthusiasm. about vegetarian diets. Nicolas insisted we hunt down a pub called, Town Crier since it is one of the only places in North America where you can get Westvleteren 12, a beer brewed in a Belgian monastery in very minuscule quantities. It is only sold to support the monastery and is not considered a business venture by the monks. And it is apparently ranked by many as the best beer in the world. (Don’t believe? Read the wikipedia page)
The rare and elusive Westvleteren 12
The server at the pub could not tell us how they were able to procure the beer (secrets, secrets) but he was very pleased and impressed when Nicolas ordered it. I am no connoisseur by any means, but I will say it was refreshing, yeasty, complex, and very tasty. Nicolas was in heaven.
Just being silly
Royal Ontario Museum
Toronto is a large city, obviously, and we didn’t see too much of it. We had a nice time at the Royal Ontario Museum. We also saw a comedy show at Second City Toronto. It was a good show with a few really funny performers but sometimes it traded too much wokeness for not enough comedy finesse. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Berkeley girl and love smart, timely humor, but only when it’s actually funny. Overall it was a fun way to spend an evening. In the morning we said goodbye to Toronto and headed back towards the Motherland to start the actual cross country part of our cross country road trip.
