September 14th and 15th: All the Things, Then Home

I won't lie; it was hard to get out of bed the next morning. I could have slept all day! But it was our last day in the city and we wanted to make the most of it, so I dragged myself out of bed and we went down the street for breakfast.

The weather was pretty nice, so we grabbed a table outside. I'm going to miss those croissants when we go home!

We spent a couple hours wandering through the cool shops on Mont-Royal before heading back to the apartment for snacks. We maaay have bought just a little too much stuff at Atwater the other day. Oops. After eating a bunch of snacks and arranging for a taxi to the airport for the next morning, we hopped back on the Metro and walked back down to the Vieux Port area...

 ...and back to the Peter Hart gallery. We bought one of his paintings a couple years ago, and his stuff is always really cool. I'd been hemming and hawing over one of the paintings since I saw it the day before and wanted to go back for another look. I actually wound up buying the painting hanging above it instead! The one I was originally looking at had more muted colors, but this one seemed so happy that I couldn't resist. They'll be shipping this one, so it should be hanging in our living room in a few weeks!

We wandered back up toward the shopping area and took a short break to sit near the fountains. The weather was way better than forecast, so it was nice to hang out and enjoy the view (and sit. Holy monkeys, was I hurting from all the walking the day before!). We eventually continued down Rue Sainte Catherine and made our way toward the giant mall.

They have a Lindt store, complete with chocolate that just runs out of these faucets. *drool*

We each got a drink from the Lindt store, then split a giant crepe before hitting up a few more stores, then walking a bit to our last big stop of the day...

...the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Montreal. We'd been here a couple years ago, too, and they had some fun stuff. The blue painting on the left reminded me of finger painting when I was a kid.

They have a cool area with weird modern art furniture, too. Mark really liked the wooden chairs on the right that were all tangled together.

This time we made it to a few other sections of the museum, too. I forgot to write down this artist's name, but he had a lot of neat landscapes.

It was getting a bit late in the day, so we made a couple more quick stops for 'souvenirs' (fancy liquors we can't get in the US haha) before heading out to dinner.

Mark's bartender lady had recommended le Chien Fumant, so we decided to grab dinner and drinks there. She was spot on...the food was amazing! We split a pork belly taco appetizer...

...and I had a fantastic mushroom risotto to round out dinner. It was ridiculously good. The restaurant was right on a corner in a mostly residential neighborhood, so we got to spend the meal watching people walk by with their dogs, which was pretty fun.

We made one more stop for the night: back to Lab! They had so many good drinks that it was hard to choose...we'll definitely have to come back here sometime. We behaved ourselves, though, and called it a night after one drink so we could go back to the apartment, pack, and get some sleep.

While it would have been nice to sleep later, the alarm went off at 4:30 the next morning and it was time to leave. Our taxi was early, security and customs were super easy, and by 7am we were boarding our flight back home.

Bye, Montreal...we'll be back again someday!

It would have been nice to get a direct flight, but the only option for that left at 6am and would have meant getting up at 3-something. No thanks! We connected through Charlotte instead. Both flights went really well (which was honestly surprising, since we were flying American and that had been a giant mess the last trip), and we had a long enough layover to grab a snack in between. We made it back to Dulles right on time, made a short stop at home for a snack, shower, and to pet the doggies, then went back in to work from 5 to 11pm. It had been a very long day, but it was worth it. The trip had been great, and it was a lot of fun to go back again!