Le Saint Martin Hotel Particulier, Montreal

This will be my last post about my Montreal trip but I definitely wanted to post about this hotel. Ella and I wanted a hotel that was decent enough to sleep in but still affordable, so compared to our other choices, this was on our affordable list. As such, we didn't have super high expectations. The rooms looked nice enough in the pictures and the location was great. Well let me tell you how surprised we were.

Our room had two queen beds, that much we knew, but we didn't realize the room would be so spacious. Not to mention, the feel of the room was just luxurious. Most of all, the bathroom was huge with a deep tub, double sinks, and a glass wall with a wooden panel sliding door. There were bathrobes and slippers for us.

The bathtub was so nice that we just had to take advantage of it. Ella and I may have spent a little too much on bath bombs from lush but the tub was just perfect for it. In a way, it was terrible for our wallets to be next to a mall. Let's see. We tried "guardian of the forest" which was amazing and made the water a lush green, and "intergalactic", which is the first picture. Then we tried "Frozen" which left a lot of silver sparkles and mixed it with "Dragon's egg" to have that cool fire and ice look. Then we combined something pink, I think "rose bomb shell", with the special "golden egg" because we wanted lots of gold glitter. Basically the tub was a hot glitter mess and it was awesome.

Anyway, as a wrap up post. Let me just mention all the other things we went to that I didn't post about. We went to the planetarium, which was great but it was mostly watching videos so nothing to photograph, and the Olympic park where one of the past summer Olympics were held. We don't have many pictures about walking all around the city and old Montreal but believe me, we did. We were literally the only ones walking outside most nights. We went to see quite a few other nice churches, which are everywhere in Montreal by the way. Quite a bit of poutine and a whole lot of Tim Hortons. Not to mention our scenic ride home on amtrak and a brief stopover at Albany and New York City.

The trip was great. And now that this is the last post, expect posts now on my more recent trip to New Orleans! I've been in a travelling mood :)

Montreal, Underground City

For our first day in Montreal, Ella and I decided to explore the mall, which is apparently part of a huge underground city that stretches for miles underneath Montreal. Being winter, most people were using this to get from place to place since it is also attached to most of the metro stops. Our hotel was conveniently located next to a metro stop and next to this mall. Of course we had to explore!

This underground city is huge and we only realized after looking at the map that the hours we spent exploring it was only just a small part of that network. Also, part of it was because we spent a lot of time in that Barbie museum. At some areas, there were four floors. Parts were also connected to hotels. Lots of places to eat and most of those places served poutine and surprisingly lots of ice cream shops. Although the actual streets of Montreal were quite empty, this place was always very busy. We didn't even know our hotel would be next to such a place when we booked it so lucky us! Photos courtesy of Ella.

Montreal, Biodome

I wasn't sure what to expect of the Biodome at first but after going, it is definitely worth going to. It's almost like the botanical gardens in which it has atriums that are separated by different types of biomes, hence the name biodome. True to the biome definition, the exhibits also include animals. It's basically like it transports you to a different place. Although it was winter, the heating for the warmer biomes were on point. I was burning up in my sweater.

This place was awesome and we definitely spent more time here than we had planned. It's alright though, our schedules were flexible. Looking back at some of the photos, I kind of look like Cousin It. Photos courtesy of Ella.

Montreal, Marche Jean-Talon

This market was one of the places on Ella's list and when I got there, I could definitely see why. It is abundant with a lot of fresh produce and Ella loves going to the farmers markets where we live. I wish we could have bought some but unfortunately we didn't have time to bring back the produce to our hotel so they would have spoiled while we were out on our excursions. Still, this was a cute place.

Photos courtesy of Ella since she has the fancy camera and all. She'll be doing her own posts about our Montreal trip soon. We've got pretty different preferences so it will most likely be very different from my own posts. Surprisingly, more Montreal posts still to come! To think we were only there for four days!