A trip to my favourite Canadian city

I heart Montréal- just spent Wednesday to Sunday enjoying fascinating sessions on bilingual and francophone language development and sharing the city I loved for two years with Andrew.

Here are some highlights of our trip! (warning- lots of pictures!)

 Bixi's! Montréal is in her second year of 'rentable' bicycles. Andrew fell in LOVE with the idea and will be writing a guest post soon on the whole topic.

 This is an example of the excellent bicycle lanes- see the poles? They separate the bicycle lanes from cars to assure no one, say, parks or drives in the bicycle lanes.

 How I missed the métro. Seriously. SO convenient and easy to use. Also, since I left they finished a few extra stations and the orange line now ends with 'Montmorency' and not 'Henri-Bourassa'. Weird.

 Our first place to visit was Vieux Montréal. The buildings are so beautiful and historic (right). I then dragged Andrew up to des Pins to see good ole 'Beatty Hall' (left) where I spent my entire Master's. Surprisingly, Lilly, admin, still remembered my name after five years! The picture directly above is a good example of the townhouses in my old neighbourhood on St Joseph.

 I discovered Katrin Leblond's wonderful, hand made, sustainable clothing boutique. And bought fun hand felted and recycled copper earrings and one of her beautifully hand sewn organic cotton dresses. Yay!

 Saw this TINY yoga studio sign- Ahimsa Yoga and had to snap a picture- Eco Yoga anyone? Funnily enough, I met the owner about an hour later- and she even recognized me as 'Eco Yogini'!! We got to visit her studio and it is GORGEOUS. Wish I could have practiced there!

 An exciting moment was when I got to meet Roseanne, former 'Its all yoga, baby' blogger extraordinaire. It was so amazing to get to meet her in real life. She's hilarious, clever and well... just like her blog only better! The space, le cagibi, was so cute and incredibly 'Montréal'. Also filled with hilarious roller derby-ers with jersey's that said 'The Silencer' and 'Dolly Parts'em'.

 Andrew and I losing our Vegan Virginity at 'Aux vivres': an amazing Vegan restaurant. Now, we may not be converted, but it was a fantastic Montréal experience! I ate a Buddha Bowl, and he had a Garden Burger. Mine was fabulous, but let's just say Andrew still loves beef-made burgers (hah, he said 'It's not terrible' which is high praise for carnivorous Andrew).

Our last day in Montréal we met friends for brunch at Les Entretiens. It was a fun meal filled with yummy crêpes (pomme, noix et brie) in a space with First Nations Art on the wall, a baby grand piano with a jazz pianist on the right with delicious mocha in a BOWL. As you can see, Andrew is experiencing coffee in a bowl as you can only in Montréal.