Two Days in Montreal – A Couple of Foodies Drinking Tequila - Part 1

We just spent a whirlwind two days in Montreal, a visit that was barely long enough to get a taste of this fascinating, bilingual city and want to come back for more. We loved it!

Montreal is just a two-hour drive from Burlington VT, where we dropped our youngest, Lex, off for a college orientation weekend and then headed north. We met a surly Canadian at the border crossing, who ordered Bob to turn off the video camera and unsmilingly peppered us with questions.

And then we were off, driving north through cornfields and flat farmland that presented a striking contrast to the lush green mountains we had just passed through in Vermont. After an hour or so, Montreal swallowed us up rather suddenly as we entered the city, which is actually an island. We crossed a long bridge that seems to still be under construction. (In fact, much of Montreal seems to be under construction - the city is clearly experiencing a building boom.)

A European-Feeling Capital

Despite a large crop of green glass apartment buildings at one end of the downtown, there were enough majestic old buildings to make us feel we were visiting a European capital. All the signs are in French, the official language of the province of Quebec, and everyone in Montreal speaks both French and English. 

Montreal, Canada’s second-most populous city and host to the Summer Olympics in 1976, is clearly a growing city with a kinetic energy. A lot of the architecture was interesting and cutting-edge and construction was going on everywhere. 

We used a few credit card miles Bob had accumulated to treat ourselves to two nights at the Marriott Chateau Champlain, a luxury hotel with breathtaking views of the downtown and Mont Royal from our arched 28^th-floor window.

Night view

Day view

Alas, all the walking we did made our legs too tired to run, or even walk, to the mountain, so we had to be satisfied with the view.

Ideal Weather

The weather was perfect, warm and summery each day with just enough clouds to keep it from feeling oppressive. (Bob kept reminding me that winter would be a far different story.)

First-Class Food

The reason I started with the weather is because I want to talk about the food, and to us, the two were intertwined: we ate almost every meal outdoors while enjoying perfect weather. I had read that Montreal is a true foodies’ city, and we definitely found that to be true.

We found genuine Mexican food at Escondite in the Old City, where we sat at a corner table of the fenced in sidewalk dining room. I had tacos with crisp fried cauliflower, black bean paste and chipotle cream, so tasty! The guacamole was genuine Mexican, which meant no tomatoes or onions but lots of lime and cilantro. Que rico! The chips were fresh-made, light, crunchy and perfect. Bob enjoyed tacos al pastor, lots of meat the way he likes it with pieces of pineapple.

I had cauliflower tacos with chipotle cream and spicy black bean

Bob had tacos al pastor

We wanted to enjoy jazz music at Mondavi, across the street, but the weather was just too glorious to go inside. (That was OK, though; we enjoyed wonderful buskers in the parks – a cellist, a singing guitar player, a violinist and even an opera singer.)

We had a mouthwatering French breakfast at Maggie Oakes on Place Jacques Cartier, where I had Le Santé (the healthy one; maple oatmeal, fresh berries and organic yogurt) with perfect café au lait and Bob chowed down on eggs benedict with fresh fruit and perfect fried potatoes. That experience was made even more delightful because we sat at a corner of the outdoor patio and watched the artisans and vendors in this popular pedestrian square set up for the day. The highlight was the bagpiper and a mini-squad of men in Revolutionary War-era costumes who marched down the street with rifles and a drum.

Our last dinner was a Paradiso in the Old City, where we enjoyed lasagna and pesto while watching the world go by.

In the morning we set out from our hotel in search of breakfast and found it to be mostly a shopping and business area. But a few blocks away, we stumbled into an underground mall and food court with a spectacular array of reasonable prices, delectable choices. Bob enjoyed a coffee-flavored muffin and I had one of the best chocolate croissants I have ever had the privilege to experience, as well as coffee from a coffee bar that offered about 20 flavor choices and an additional four cream choices. The bagel place across the way also beckoned tantalizingly, but a girl has to make choices sometimes: I took the French option.

Gifted Bartenders

We discovered a couple of choice rooftops for imbibing in alcoholic beverages while enjoying the view. At the Observatoire, we took the elevator to the 44^th floor, sunk into a couch and indulged ourselves while looking at the downtown in all directions. (We declined to pay for entry to the actual viewing observatory, two floors up, and instead invested our money in a couple of well-made drinks.)

Rum and coke at the Observatoire, 44th floor

View from the rooftop bar

Afterward, we wandered toward Vieux Montreal and stumbled upon a tequila bar. Realizing it was actually July 24, International Tequila Day, we went in and ordered a couple of reposados. Mine was white when it should have been light gold from aging 18 months in oak barrels, but I drank it anyway. Salud!

We also enjoyed at a rooftop bar over the St. Lawrence River, where Bob and I enjoyed palomas (recipe) while visiting with a friendly Canadian couple, Luc and Patsy.

Drinking palomas, overlooking the Old Port

Recipe for palomas

Luc and Patsy

Coming next: Part 2, The Old Port and Notre Dame

Why We’re in Vermont for the Summer

I thought I’d take a step back and explain why we are suddenly blogging from Vermont instead of Mexico.

Our Vermont History

Friends who knew us when we lived in Mamaroneck, NY (1998-2008) know that during that time, we bought a couple of vacation rental houses in Vermont. We wanted a rural place to escape from the hustle bustle of the NY metro area, and we loved New England, where I lived for much of my childhood.

VT House #1: The Lake House

The first house we bought was meant to be our retirement home, and we nicknamed it “The Lake House.” 

It’s a six-bedroom chalet nestled on a wooded three-quarters of an acre across the street from 200-acre Lake Rescue, where we keep a dock with boats. The kids and I would escape for half of every summer to decompress in the Green Mountains, go swimming and boating, hike nearby trails, sit around a fire pit making s’mores and singing camp songs, gaze at stars and explore Vermont. 

We had a Zodiac boat with a motor that ee used to go tubing. We also had two kayaks, a rowboat and a someone sailboat. Bob came up for vacation a couple of weeks each summer, and otherwise took Amtrak from NY every Friday for a weekend visit. During the winter, we came up on occasional weekends and some school breaks to ski nearby Okemo. I would XC ski on Lake Rescue.

The dock and boats at the Lake House

As soon as the contract was signed on the Lake House, we found ourselves in the vacation rental business, because it came with winter seasonal renters, and that was our plan for paying for it.

VT House #2: The Brook House

We bought the second house, which we call “The Brook House,” a couple of years later because the real estate market was booming, and it seemed like a good investment. The Brook House is a 120-year-old, five-bedroom former chicken coop that backs to a creek and Tiny Pond Recreation Area, 400 acres of state forest that no one seems to know exists. Echo Lake is less than a quarter-mile away. The yard is big and there’s a little country store across the street.

The Tyson Store, across the street

We also dubbed it, tongue in cheek, “The College Fund.” Alas, that real estate “boom” turned out to be a bubble when the market tanked. The region is only now recovering, so we still own both houses, though the Brook is on the market. One rental home is quite enough to manage from a distance!

The creek out back

Two Houses Filled With Love

The houses, especially The Lake House, are an integral part of our family story, especially since we moved to Colorado in the middle of the kids’ childhoods, so this region served as an anchor for their lives. We filled the houses with people we loved whenever we could. Family – grandpa and grandmas, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins – and friends came up to the lake for summer vacations, year after year, creating so many dear memories.

Welcome to the Lake House

The dock and boats

Kayaking on the Black River with Aryk

Our friend Marie Laguerre brought her twins Omar and Kayla to attend Farm & Wilderness Barn Day Camp (eight miles up the road, and extraordinary) with my kids, and lived in the house for two weeks with us. I remember Omie would eat nothing but ramen noodles. Marya and Mickey Carter did the same with kids Spencer the bed at the Brook House (and I was so proud of myself for adding plastic covers to the mattresses that summer before their arrival), is now a brilliant athlete attending Harvard!

Cousin Jeanine Troisi came and learned to ski one year; another summer she ran a hilly 5K race along Echo Lake not long after giving up smoking. I was so proud of her! My brother Mike, sister-in-law Paula and their three kids visited; we rode bikes together around the lake with the smallest kids in kiddie seats. My nephew Jake and I kayaked into the middle of the lake to watch the Perseids Meteor Shower. Our friend Valerie Rasmussen, who has since passed away, came to hike and waterfall jump one summer, and to ski one winter.

My dear friends Mary and Sam Wiley brought live lobsters from Newport, RI, and we watched lawbstah races on the front deck of the Lake House before enjoying scrumptious steamed lobsters. I think of her whenever I see those lobster pots, which we still have, just waiting for her next visit. Mary came back another year and used the Brook House as a base while visiting colleges with her son Henry. Or was it Frank? I remember Lex’s stuffed lamb Buggya Guy disappeared during that visit, somewhere between going to car to leave for the Killington Adventure Zone to enjoy the alpine slide and arriving at the mountain. Forever a mystery.

Hiking at Echo Lake

View from the top

My cousin Loraine Carapellucci and husband Dave Handley brought their three daughters for a week, and our kids really bonded. I remember we had a merry time on the rope swing of Discovery Island, in the middle of Lake Rescue, giving kids Olympic scores for “poses” before they dropped into the water. Alas, that swing is gone now; the tree from which it hung was brought down in the Great Flood of 2012.

We even hosted a Dominican-American girl from the Bronx named Clarissa Delgado through the Fresh Air Fund, to give her her first nature experience. I remember watching stars with Clarissa, a phenomenal sight for a girl accustomed to bright street lights and no view of the starry sky, and teaching her how to fish. In fact, it seems I spent countless summer hours putting worms on hooks and extricating fish from the same hooks over and over as I taught countless munchkins how to fish off the dock. I failed hopelessly to learn to fly fish, however, despite efforts summer after summer from my friend Eddie Eagan, who was director of the local Chamber of Commerce and taught flyfishing on the side.

I loved running around the lakes, and often woke up early to kayak on the misty lake, alone on 200 acres of calm water save for a couple of loons.

Misty morning, Lake Rescue

So many thousands of wonderful memories! When we moved to Colorado in early 2009, we were saddened to realize our Vermont summers were abruptly over. We took a financial hit from the recession that took years to recover from, and couldn’t afford to fly the family across the country. So the houses became vacation rental businesses that I managed from afar, and Bob and I would go back every couple of years to make improvements and do work on them.

We sort of forgot that the Lake House was originally supposed to be a home.  

Reconnecting with Vermont

But this past November, we went up and stayed in the Brook House for five weeks after Bob retired. We took Bob’s mom and sister Beth, and it snowed a good two or three feet during our stay. Bob and I spent an hour every morning in the hot tub on the back deck sipping mimosas and enjoying the sound of the creek while snowflakes gently played with our hair and ice from 13-degree mornings formed little spikes on his beard. My brother Phil, wife Rose and son Philip came for Thanksgiving, and 2.0 (pronounced 2-point-oh, as we like to call Philip the 2^nd) sat in the same highchair my kids had sat in as he dropped his pieces of stuffing on the rug. My niece Catherine and her daughter Audrey also came for a few days, and Aud built a snowman in the yard.

Audrey and Cat build a snowman

And suddenly we remembered that these weren’t just vacation rentals. They were our homes! And even though we had left Colorado behind for the traveling life and sort of felt homeless, we weren’t!

Part-Time VT Residents

Aryk loved Vermont so much that this summer, they took a job as a counselor at Farm And Wilderness Camp, which they attended for eight summers before we moved to Colorado. Lex loved it so much that they chose to go to college at Champlain College in Burlington, VT.

So we have decided that we will live in Vermont during the summers. The houses give our kids a place to come to from college that feels like home. They can get summer jobs. They can visit their favorite ice cream place (the Ludlow Coffee Company, formerly Scoops) and eat at their favorite pizza joint (Goodman’s American Pie). They can feel anchored.

Another favorite ice cream place, Seward's in Rutland.
I always order the Bittersweet Symphony!
Lex loves the Panda Paws.

We are working hard, though. Because we are trying to sell the Brook House, Bob and I are spending long hours making improvements – painting the house and some doors, pulling up a rug and refinishing a floor, planting grass and landscaping, buying furniture, and hiring and overseeing workmen. But we’re also going for long bike rides on scenic Route 100, a refreshing opportunity after the challenge of riding in Mexico. We’re hiking the Long/Appalachian Trail, enjoying our favorite ice cream places, trying to visit every bar in the Okemo Valley. We’re running and doing yoga and lifting weights, and hanging out on the Tyson Store chatting with neighbors.

Hiking the Appalachian Trail

Come October, we will head back south of the border and explore Mexico for the next 9 months. But when Lex gets done with their first year at Champlain College in May, we’ll return to the Green Mountain State and move back into the Lake House for the summer. (Hopefully, the Brook House will be sold and college paid for with the proceeds!)

I relish the opportunity to enjoy the region and explore the Green Mountain State more, without the burden of juggling full-time work, as I did when my kids were young. I look forward to connecting to the community and making friends. And I urge our family and friends to come visit! Because the Lake House has, in fact, turned into our summer retirement home. And we want to build more memories!

(In fact, my sorority sister Eileen Armelin, sister Julie and brother-in-law Mark, hopefully with Audrey and Cat; possibly Marie again with husband Joe; and family friends Julles Marquez and Ian Miller are coming to visit soon, so we're already starting!)

Hiking on Vermont's Long Trail

Did you know the Appalachian Trail was inspired by Vermont’s Long Trail? Beto and I discovered this after a couple recent hikes on the Long Trail, the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the United States.

Known as Vermont’s “footpath in the wilderness,” the 272-mile Long Trail runs from Massachusetts to Canada, with 166 more miles of side trails. Built by the Green Mountain Club between 1910 and 1930, it follows the main ridge of the Green Mountains and crosses Vermont’s highest peaks. The Appalachian Trail coincides with the Long Trail for 100 miles in the southern third of Vermont, including around Ludlow, where we are staying.

It is not for the faint. Crossing high peaks means a lot of up and down. And we have discovered it can be tricky.

Long Trail Hike 1

Last weekend we drove north to Killington and got onto the trail across the street from the appropriately named Inn at Long Trail. We hiked three hilly, strenuous miles through amazingly lush, green woodlands – especially coming from dry, high desert ecosystems in the mountains of Colorado and Mexico! As it was our first hike since arriving in Vermont, we turned around after a mile and a half, just .6 miles from the peak of Pico Mountain, which we will attempt to scale another time.

Long Trail Hike 2

This morning we embarked on the combined AT/LT along Route 103 between Mount Holly and Clarendon. At the beginning, we had to cross a beautiful, shaky suspension bridge over a glorious gorge, and I remembered bringing my kids here for a walk about 15 years ago, and they were terrified.

The Long Trail is marked by two-by-six-inch white blazes (side trails are blazed in blue), but when we got into the woods on the other side, we couldn’t find any. We followed the unmarked trail along a wide, rocky creek, then turned right to follow a second promising path straight up the mountain. But there were still no markers, and eventually we encountered a US Land Boundary Marker, and the trail petered off into nothingness. It was a weird, vulnerable feeling to be standing there in the middle of the woods with no trails in any direction.

So we went back down the hill and continued the creekside hike, passing several camping groups – one a young family with a small tent and two smaller children in swimsuits getting ready for an icy swim in the creek, and the other a group of adults with two large tents cooking over a big breakfast fire. Again, no markers.

Idyllic Discovery

When the trail suddenly ended, we saw a large flat rock at the edge of the creek with a red heart painted on it, and took a break. That break turned into an hour-long siesta during which we just let go and enjoyed being in nature. Bo laid back and snoozed. It was warm but cloudy, and the cold water kept it refreshing. I just drank in the bright green leaves on the trees across the creek, the trickle of the water, the patterns on the rocks, and the play of light on the surface of the water. Several small planes flew overhead (we were not far from Rutland Airport) and we listened to the rumble of a train approaching, passing and departing, just beyond visibility through the trees.

We sat quietly, talked about life and the kids, and just breathed. It was idyllic, and we will definitely return with a picnic.

On the way back, Beto found the turnoff to the Long Trail not far from the suspension bridge, so we will be back next week. It starts straight up, so I anticipate a challenging hike.

Learn more about the Long Trail here.