Around the end of June/early July, the husband and I went to revisit Toronto and Montreal. The primary reason for the visit was to see our friends! It’s been 5 years since we last were in Eastern Canada and it felt like it was time for us to check in on folks.

We first visited Toronto, and stayed with our friend M! In Toronto, we ate SO much. There was a delicious ramen place, that M took us to after we dropped off stuff at his apartment. Kaminari Ramen was the place, and they had such a creamy bone broth. Afterwards, we went to Bang Bang Ice Cream, and there was a huge lineup. On Google, it said they were closing, but they stayed open well after because they had so many more people to serve in line. I got the HK milk tea ice cream, which had bits of tea leaves in it. It was delicious but a bad idea because it ended up keeping me up even after taking my melatonin pills that I was hoping to correct my jet lag with.

Day 2 in Toronto was trying Badiali Pizza (the cacio e pepe slice was AMAZING OMG), and then heading to Kensington Market for some thrift shopping. It was super hot out though (like 32 degrees?), so we couldn’t stand being outside for long and kept ducking into cafes and stores to cool down. At night, we went to Cherry BBQ. It was very yummy, but we struggled to finish the platter we had ordered. That said, we did stop by like 4 cafes throughout the day for snacks and drinks, so we were never hungry to begin with! After being thoroughly stuffed with all the BBQ meats we could stomach, we then went to the Distillery District for a ghost tour. It was the first time I’ve ever done one of these, and I’ve always wanted to. It was ok. It was nice for learning the history around the area, but it wasn’t very spooky.

For our last full day in Toronto on day 3, we woke up and headed to the St. Lawrence Market. I love markets. I ended up having oysters for breakfast, and we also bought some snacks for our upcoming road trip. We then grabbed lunch at Miss Fu in Chengdu. They had one of the best marinated spicy tofu dishes that I’ve ever had! But don’t ask me why we were eating hot pot skewers on another 30+ degree day. We once again employed a strategy of cafe and store-hopping for air con. What probably should’ve been a 20-minute walk from where we were to Little Canada took like several hours as a result.

Little Canada was so cool though! I highly recommend visiting. We were fascinated with the recreation of Vancouver, and having been to Niagara Falls, Toronto, and Quebec, there were lots of neat areas we got to revisit through the detailed miniatures. The best part, though, was the little situations and dioramas that gave so much more life to the exhibits than first meets the eye. We spent more time here than we thought we would, and because I wanted to take a nap before our Blue Jays game, we ended up skipping dinner.

It was for the best, because we went to the Jays vs New York Mets game on what happened to be Loonie Dogs Night! I had 2 or 3 dogs, and M and my husband each had like 5-ish hot dogs. At one point, I got a poutine from the Mary Brown’s stand and they wanted one too so they could make poutine dogs. Baseball is not my sport. I really don’t understand it much, and I always feel the games are too long. I am glad I went to an MLB game, and one to support our only Canadian team at that! Unfortunately, we lost, but it was still a neat experience. We rounded off the night in Chinatown, grabbing bingsu and also snapping some photobooth photos!

On July 1st, the Wednesday, we got picked up bright and early by our friend T for our road trip to Montreal! Before we headed off, we stopped by The Morning After for some breakfast. They had a really cool rainbow latte that I couldn’t help but get. We stopped midway at the Giant Apple just to grab a drink and some snacks—but it was blistering hot that day, so we quickly went back to the car to continue our trip east.

We eventually made it to T’s house (where the husband and I were staying for our Montreal leg of the trip) and had some Chinese takeout with Montreal friends! And played a horror game. Afterwards, some of us went to go grab a proper Montreal poutine at midnight. My husband and I wanted to go back to Chez Claudette, which was near where we used to work! I’ve missed Montreal poutines so much. And this was going to be the first of many during our short trip here.

The next day, we took a walk down memory lane and went to Marché Jean-Talon. My husband (then boyfriend) and I used to live pretty close to this market, and at one point, one of the companies I worked at was also near here. So we’d spend many nights either grabbing dinner near here after he picked me up after work, or we’d venture out for weekend visits. We then ate lunch at a place SUPER close to our old apartment at Fabre station called Mange Dans Mon Hood. They had delicious smash burgers, and we ate our 2nd poutine in 24 hours.

We revisited our other apartment in Côte-des-Neiges after lunch, and also had some Mr. Puffs. I really wish we had a Mr. Puffs in Vancouver!! I love these loukoumades! I also miss Première Moisson, and we stopped by quickly to get some rillettes and goodies and snacks as souvenirs for our friends/family back home.

We then went to the Biodôme with our friends. The funny thing is that in all our years of living in Montreal, we’ve never been because they were basically closed for renovations from 2018 to 2020. And then Covid happened. And then we moved back to Vancouver. It’s a really neat space and I’m glad we finally got to see it!

Later that day, we met up with some friends around Ubisoft to go get ice cream. Iconoglace was SO good. I thought it might be overhyped, but the strawberry parfait I had was 10/10. We then had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants: Au Pied de Cochon. We had a poutine here too, making it our 3rd poutine of the day. Rounding off the night, we then watched the free fireworks!

We somehow squeezed in a fourth poutine at Gibeau Orange Julep right before heading home.

On July 3rd, the Friday, I went to visit a friend and got my nails done in the morning! Then we once again went back to the Ubisoft neighborhood to meet up with our friends for lunch, grabbing a bagel as we waited. We had a pizza extravaganza and compared 2 popular pizza joints against one another. Afterwards, we visited Old Port for a bit. I have always marvelled at how European Old Port and Old Montreal look! It was, once again, a very hot day so we ducked into Le Petit Dep for a rest.

At night, we went to some of our other friends’ backyard BBQ party! It was fun catching up with them. It felt like it had been forever, but at the same time, it felt like no time had passed at all. We were immediately vibing, and it felt right to just spend a night eating good food and doing silly things together.

Our last full day in Montreal was the Saturday, and we met up with our friends for morning dim sum in Chinatown! It was nice getting to revisit Chinatown. The husband and I often came here during weekends to stock up on Asian groceries and Chinese bakery buns. We took some chaotic photo booth photos and then I had to run to see a friend at her place for a quick visit. I got to meet her doggo!!

We Ubered from my friend’s to Strøm Spa for a nice, relaxing few hours with our friends. The husband and I used to visit this location to splurge from time to time. I took a nice nap while we were here!

At night, we went to Korean BBQ in downtown Montreal. The husband and I brought Pokemon figurines for everyone to open. They were so cute!! We grabbed dessert after dinner and then eventually, everyone made their way to T’s home to play some games and round off the night.

The next morning, the husband and I packed up and then went with M and T to Allo Mon Coco for one last breakfast before we had to head to the airport to catch our flight home.

We’re glad we took this trip out and got to catch up with so many people we’ve dearly missed. It was very nostalgic to see the place where my husband and I first developed our lives together, away from our family. Thankful to revisit the family we built in Montreal, and we hope we’ll see them again soon ❤️