Day 3 - The Extra at the End

Pembroke, Ontario to Montreal, Quebec

221 miles

Let's be honest, we were kind of intimidated by the thought of riding through and staying in the province of Quebec. We knew that here everything was written or spoken in French. Sean has a pretty good grasp of the tourists' version of the language. Anne has none. At all.

The road signs were our first big issue- They were all in French, and when the motorcycle's navigation speaks no French at all, we assumed it was going to be incredibly confusing getting to wherever we needed to go.

Luckily, the navigator discovered an untapped ability to guess at what the road signs were trying to tell us...

And other than getting "Ouest" and "Est" confuse a few (many) times, we did surprisingly OK, and made it to Montreal without getting lost.

We assumed that staff at the restaurants, hotels and bars spoke English, at least in Montreal, but frankly, we didn't want to look like dumb tourists expecting everyone in the world to speak our language. So we tried, 95% unsuccessfully, to communicate in French (and at times accidently Spanish because, darn it, a lot of the words are similar). Usually, whomever we were trying to speak to just smiled and answered with, "It's OK, we can speak in English." Seriously. We tried.

We arrived in Old Montreal early in the day, dropped our bag off at the hotel and started exploring. The first thing we needed was lunch, so we stopped at a local eating and drinking establishment where we met Jono the bartender,

who talked with us about living in Montreal and what we needed to see while we were there and what it was like living in a country where you are required to know two languages.
We ordered authentic Montreal poutine -

potatoes, meat, gravy and a fried egg on top. It was really good.

After lunch we headed down the street, past the Montreal Basilica, to St. Paul street which was lined with outdoor cafes, with any kind of food and drink imaginable.

It was a beautiful, hot summer's day and it seemed like everyone was outside enjoy the sights and sounds.

It was dark when we headed back to the hotel, and the Basilica and everything around it was lit to show off the amazing architecture.

Our hotel was amazing - it was built in 1870 and had artwork from all over the world. It even had the original LOVE sculpture from the early 1970s out front.

We visited a little more with people in the lobby, then called it a night. Excited to go out and explore more of the Old City tomorrow.