Shortly after we decided to visit Montreal as part of our summer vacation, we learned of their unique style of bagels. Described as being smaller, thinner, and denser and noteworthy for being baked in a wood-fire oven, we’d been excited to try them during our visit. I left our Airbnb before 6:00 for the 2-mile walk to the most famous bagel shop in the city, St. Viateur Bagel Shop.
While St. Viateur Bagel Shop has multiple locations, including a full-fledged cafe serving bagel sandwiches and a handful of non-bagel menu options, I wanted to check out the original shop. It’s making and selling fresh bagels daily from 6:00 a.m. to midnight and the bagel baskets are accompanied by coolers filled with potential toppings like cream cheese, smoked salmon, and various kinds of butter, jams, and jellies. I chose a half dozen bagels and packages of sweet and savory Philadelphia cream cheese to take back to the Airbnb.
This modest paper bag was filled with six excellent Montreal-style bagels.
After a bagel breakfast, we hopped in an Uber to Mount Royal Park, which featured a concrete terrace with views of Montreal. Our savvy driver ensured we were dropped off near the observation deck and not at the bottom of the park, which I’d chosen as our destination. We avoided climbing hundreds of stairs, which was critical given Eilidh was not a fan of her footwear and complained about any distance of walking.
Amanda and Noah posed for a photo outside of our Airbnb.
Emmie and I with Montreal in the background. Note my new bagel t-shirt, and the haze of the sky from the Canadian wildfires.
We snapped a few photos and then retreated to the on-site cafe for some bottled water and a respite from temperatures that were hovering around 90 degrees. I then insisted on walking to see a Leonard Cohen mural and then to a David’s Tea store, a chain I’d had fond memories of from our 2016 travels but had since been significantly downsized with only a handful of physical locations remaining. It turns out, the location in downtown Montreal was merely a mall kiosk with a handful of prepackaged varieties and no made-to-order offerings.
The girls obliged my request for a photo in front of the Leonard Cohen mural.
The long walk did leave as at the Metro stop we needed to get to the Jean Talon Market, one of several public markets in Montreal. The subway was clean and efficient, and we made good time even accounting for the required transfer between the green and orange lines. The market skewed heavily toward produce but we were able to find a handful of shops serving fresh-made food for a hodgepodge lunch. The girls had corn dogs and chips, Amanda tried a couple of tacos, I enjoyed some grilled pineapple (and various leftovers), and Noah had a meaty piece of thick-crust pizza.
Eilidh required a great deal of carrying and/or shoulder-back rides on our walk, including at the Metro station.
After popping into an unremarkable chocolate store, we returned to the Metro to ride a few stops to the station that was closest to our Airbnb. Unfortunately, the closest station was still a 15-minute walk away on a hot day, and available Uber options seemed equally inefficient when combining wait times with the city’s afternoon traffic. Amanda and Noah buzzed ahead, while I hung back with Emmie and Eilidh to hop in a record store. Eilidh wanted some water, and was still hungry, so the girls split a sub at Subway before we finished the journey back to the Airbnb.
Our evening activity was Jet Boating on the St. Lawrence River, which departed from downtown Montreal. We heard a few important details along with a lot of filler from the crew before we traded our shoes for sandals, put on our life jackets, and boarded the boat. The hour-long boat ride included about 30 minutes of intense travel over the waves of the Lachine Rapids.
The entire jet boating group.
Fortunately, they snapped a photo of us in the back row, pre-ride.
Eilidh was barely old enough and tall enough to be eligible for the ride, so we were forced to sit in the boat’s back row, considered the mild option on the company’s ‘wild to mild’ spectrum. Even so, Eilidh wasn’t a fan, nor was Emmie, but they survived the ride and copious amounts of water dumped onto us as we rode the rapids. While the Montreal heat wasn’t ideal for our walking earlier in the day, it was ideal for the boat ride, as we kept pretty warm on the ride back and dried out fairly quickly after the ride concluded.
Everyone seemed to have enough energy to warrant a trip to Schwartz’s Deli for dinner. In business for more than 90 years, they have a short menu of hot and cold deli sandwiches, a steak dinner, poutine, and a handful of side options. Eilidh ordered, and loved, the poutine, which consisted of french fries topped with cheese curds, gravy, and ‘smoked meat.’ Amanda, Noah, Emmie, and I split a cold turkey sandwich and two warm smoked meat sandwiches, and I had a side of their bright green coleslaw. We cleaned our plates and Schwartz’s became our favorite meal of the trip to date.
Amanda and Noah posed with Cott Black Cherry, a soda that is apparently synonymous with Jewish Montreal delis.
Eilidh tried a few drinks of Cott soda after finishing up her poutine.
Before returning to the Airbnb, we walked a half block to Ripples Ice Cream, which had a solid 4.6 rating on Google. I found my ‘6 chocolate’ ice cream scoop to be among my all-time favorite flavors. We snapped a few photos and then split up, with the girls taking an Uber back to the Airbnb and Noah and I making the 25-minute walk through Montreal’s pedestrian-friendly streets.
