Weekend in Montreal, Dining and Sightseeing

Hello Friends,

I hope you are all doing well. I just got back last night from a wonderful trip to Montreal with my boyfriend. We spent the weekend eating delicious food, sightseeing, and catching up with an old friend of mine. Visiting Montreal is like going to a second home because I grew up in the west-island in Quebec and my family and I made many trips to Montreal over the years when I was growing up. Whenever we go to Quebec to visit family and friends, we also make a stop in Montreal and get some dinner or look around. It means so much more to me now that I got to spend more time just being a tourist in the city and taking it in, whereas when we usually come to visit, we only spend a couple of hours in Montreal to fit it into our plans as we are only there for a few days on our visits. We stayed at The Sandman in Longueuil because it was close to the metro and it was available at a good price. We really enjoyed our stay, the room was comfortable and clean, and we had a good time there. Being a metro ride from the city also encouraged us to see how the metro was in Montreal which neither one of us had explored.

First day: 

We traveled from Toronto on the VIA Rail train, leaving at 11:30 am and we arrived at around 5 pm. This travel took most of our day, but we made the most of our evening in Montreal once we got there. We got downtown and looked around while on our way to eat dinner.

Old Montreal

Walking to Modavie

Charming building in Chinatown

 We first walked past the Notre-Dame Basilica and the architecture of the church is so beautiful. I read online that Celine Dion got married there. It is beautiful on the inside from photos I looked at online. We did not go in this time, but hopefully I do at some point on another trip there.

Notre-Dame Basilica

At the front steps of the church, and people lining up to get a tour of the inside

We had made a reservation at a wonderful restaurant called Modavie. I had found this restaurant online and it looked like it would be nice to go to. We made a reservation for 8:15 pm and we got seated at our table with excellent service right away. I loved the ambiance and the live jazz music playing in the background was so enjoyable. It was someone's birthday there and the singer sang happy birthday to them and I thought it was so beautiful and that it would be so nice to spend a birthday celebration at a place like that. We ordered a charcuterie plate to start which was a lot of food for the two of us but so delicious. I ordered a seafood linguine dish that was so delicious. My boyfriend ordered the lamb burger with fries and really enjoyed his meal. 

Dinner at Modavie: Seafood linguine and the Modavie Punch 

After dinner, we walked to the harbor and watched a video being projected onto a wall. This resembled projections at night we had seen in Ottawa and Dominican Republic. My favorite has to be in Ottawa when a video about Canada's history was being projected onto the Parliament building.  We took some photos and enjoyed the beautiful weather. There were a lot of people around there and things going on. It was fun to just walk around there and enjoy the evening.

Display left over from Canada's 150th birthday! I was also here that weekend

Second day: 
I was in love with this view in the morning from our hotel window at the Sandman. It is such a perfect view of Montreal.

I loved this view!

We went to Terrasse Place D'armes for lunch. It is a beautiful outdoor restaurant tucked away on a terrace on 8th floor of the hotel. It was a beautiful view, overlooking part of old Montreal and it was a perfect day to be out on the terrace, the sun was shining and it was warm. I ordered the pulled pork poutine and my boyfriend ordered a burger and fries. I loved the poutine there, it was so delicious. 

My view from our table, facing Notre-Dame Basilica

Then we walked around old Montreal, went into some shops, and then got some ice cream at Ben and Jerry's. As we were eating we watched a performer stepping up on a ladder with swords sticking into it. He had the crowd engaged but did not too a lot of acts, more talking we thought than anything. 

Then we went on the Metro to St. Catherine's St.West to shop. We did not to do much shopping while there on the second day more just walking to see what was there and Simon's was closed that day so we went back the next day. After 6 pm, we met up with a childhood friend of mine downtown and went to Cafe Parvis for dinner. It was a lovely place, there were plants up towards the ceiling hanging down and it had a very relaxed atmosphere. I didn't take any photos while there but the pizza I had was so delicious. I ordered the cresson pizza that was topped with tomatoes, avocado, sour cream with green onions, jalapeno vinaigrette, and feta. It was so delicious, I will need to go back there again. It was so nice meeting up with my friend we all had a good time. 

Day Three: 

The third day we went to Dunn's restaurant which is famous for their smoked meat sandwiches. They were so delicious and we ordered a poutine on the side as well. My dad said the cheesecake was so good there too, but  we will have to order it  next time, because we were too full after our big lunch.

 The rest of the time we walked around St. Catherine's street again and I popped into Simons and this is probably one of my new favourite stores now because I loved everything in there and wish I could bring it all home. I can't wait to go back there and shop some more. We picked up our luggage from storage and got onto our train for the 4:40 pm departure and got home to Toronto around 9:50 pm. I did some knitting on the train ride and finished knitting my first sock which I will share with you tomorrow. I really liked the train rides to and from Montreal because it gave me so much time to knit and read.

Working away on the sock

The trip to Montreal was wonderful as always and I can't wait to go back. There are so many more places to explore and if we had more time I might want to go up Mount Royal, I have been up there with my family it is such a beautiful view of Montreal. I think it would be a lovely place to visit in the Autumn when the leaves are changing colors. Have you been to Montreal before? if so what were some of your favorite restaurants or places to visit?

Thank you so much for visiting my blog, I hope this inspires you to check out Montreal some time! If you would like to keep updated on when I post on my blog, please follow me on Bloglovin' and Google Followers!

Have a great day!

Knitting on the Beach, Camping, and Reading On

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I just got back from a weekend away camping with my family and my boyfriend. I had a wonderful time. We went to Sandbanks Provincial Park and camped in a campground that is in the park. I had such a good time, spending time with family and to be in the outdoors, reading, and knitting. I went to the Sandbanks beach two days in a row and while we were there I got a lot of knitting done.

Joining Along with The Little Room of Rachell for Yarning Along, with Frontier Dreams for Crafting On, and AsKatKnits for Unwraveled Wednesdays.

It felt so good to be camping again, roasting marshmallows, spending time catching up with my family around the campfire chatting and playing games. 

My tent is the closest one, our home for a few days

Tall trees surrounded us at the campsite

We got a lot of sand fly bites while we were there, there were so many more bugs this time camping than when we go to Craigleith in Collingwood, Ontario. I really loved all the tall trees at the campsite. It was also so nice having the beach in walking distance from the campground. We could take walks there during the day to go swimming and relax, then in the evenings we could walk down to watch the sunset. They kept the washrooms clean at the campground, and the camp sites were spread out nicely. We will probably go back there, but next time I would bring more bug spray. 

Spending time reading, while hearing the birds chirping in the background

While I was camping I started reading a book called Love the Wine You're With: A Novel by Kim Gruenenfelder. I really am enjoying it so far and I got it for the camping trip to have a light read while on the trip. So far I have been introduced to the women and their work and we will find out soon how they came to create their wine shop business together. I look forward to reading about their friendship and reading about their girl time. I am continuing to read Into the Water by Paula Hawkins as well. I am really intrigued by the story and I look forward to reading on.

Thank you for visiting my blog today and I hope you come back to visit! if you liked this post and would like to keep updated on when I post new entries, please follow me on Bloglovin' and Google Followers.

Have a good day!

Sewing the Seams of My First Knitted Sweater

Hello Friends,

I hope you are all doing well. I have been away for a little while because I have exams this week for my office administration program. I just had my accounting exam yesterday which I had been studying non-stop for a few days and I think it went pretty well. Tomorrow I have the project management exam, wish me luck!

I got a little bit of work done on my sweater on Saturday and was sewing in the seams on the shoulders, and one of the sleeves. I looked up the order of how to seam and this seems to be the best way to do shoulders, then sleeves, then the sides afterwards which makes sense because you can go up the side then right up to the end of the sleeve to close the sleeve afterwards.

I started with the shoulders and did a mattress stitch to sew up the seams, this was a little bit tricky because the stitches were going in the other direction so I just put the needle horizontally across the stitches.I then moved onto the sleeve and spread out the sweater to see how the top of the sleeve would fit into the piece once the shoulders were sewed together. I then began doing the mattress stitch to sew the seams together and this worked well as well. I will finish up sewing the sweater, then talk about how sewing the sides went and post some photos of the sweater next week! I am so excited to be done and have my first knitted sweater. Looking at the photo, I think I will take some of the seam apart of the sleeve and try to have the lines in the sleeve going down the middle, I can see it is a little off center. The sleeve at the top of the photo is not sewed in yet.

The sock is coming a long too, it is getting a bit longer and I am enjoying knitting the simple sock pattern by Patons called Spiral Socks.

I am still reading Into the Water by Paula Hawkins and I am so interested in what will happen next. It really keeps you on the edge of your seat just like Girl on the Train did, and you start to feel like you are understanding the characters and that they all have some secret motives and you are trying to figure out what they are.

Joining along with The Little Room of Rachell for Yarning Along, Frontier Dreams for Crafting On, and AsKatKnits for Unraveled Wednesday

Thank you for visiting my blog today and I hope you come back to visit! if you liked this post and would like to keep updated on when I post new entries, please follow me on Bloglovin' and Google Followers.

Have a good day!