1. I’m not super into cocktails, mostly because I find them too sweet. (I’m not that into sweets. I’ll take a cheese plate over dessert any day of the week.) But there’s one cocktail that I can get behind, and that’s the Bloody Caesar. Similar to a Bloody Mary, a Caesar is a Canadian specialty where the tomato juice is replaced with Clamato – a combo of tomato juice and clam juice. I can’t get enough.
2. One of my favorite things that we did in Montreal was ascend Mount Royal, from which Montreal gets its name. It kind of reminded me of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh: the mountain is just adjacent to the downtown city. I can only imagine how lovely it would be to have these paths and the peak so close to home. The climb made me feel like we weren’t in a city at all.
3. I have a perennial (and pretty unexplainable) obsession with fire escapes. I love them. Always have, always will. Combine a fire escape and a red brick wall, and it’s pretty much as close as I can get to being sexually attracted to a building.
4. Granted, I’ve never been to Louisiana, but Montréal is the North American city that, in my mind, best combines Old and New World. The basilica of Montreal could easily be a basilica in any French town, with its imposing towers and arched windows.
5. Of course, inside it’s another story. I’ve never seen a church this colorful – with the possible exception of the one in Strasbourg – in France. The entire interior is painted in bright colors, and even the stained glass is unique, at least to my eyes, thanks to the use of lots of green glass, whereas churches here like Notre Dame tend to veer more towards red and blue.