Our very unplanned experience in Montreal: what to do and avoid when traveling with toddlers to Canada. Parenthood, cranky toddlers and lots a beautiful photos.
You’d think that after traveling a few times with children it would get’s easier but the reality is that, just as fast as they are growing, their rituals and character are also changing. So what I thought would be an easy trip to Canada turned into an exhausting adventure.
It all started the day of our flight, at last minute we decided to book our flight and AirBnB to Montreal, Canada. It’s only a 45 minute flight from New York and we had the weekend off so we’re like “what the heck, lets go! It’ll will be a easy economical getaway”. Well on the way to the airport, the boy’s started getting impatient and cranky. It was their nap time but they were too stimulated to go to sleep with all the airport announcements and visuals. There was nothing I could do to keep them from whining, crying, and scaring all the passengers waiting in the gate area whom were most likely hoping we weren’t on their flight. I guess this could also be the beginning of terrible twos 😫.
I don’t know about you but I get super embarrassed when my kids are not behaving in public so this was a nightmare. I knew that they would fall asleep once we were on plane but the boarding process was going so slow and I could not avoid the onlookers. An eternity later (10 minutes), we boarded and as soon as the plane started moving the boy’s fell asleep. THANK GOD!
In flight, I was thinking great the boys will sleep and be in a great mood once in Canada but that wasn’t the case. They were just being pain in the buts the entire way through customs and of course we got chosen for extra security because of our short stay in the country. A series of security questions and crying babies later, we finally are released into the country. At that point, my kids stop crying because we are no longer standing in a “boring” security room.
We followed the signs out the airport to public transportation and it led us to ticketing machines were we purchased our bus tickets to the downtown area.
Public bus from the airport to downtown
Follow the instructions written on the machines and pick your ticked based on days or value. I purchased two non-recharable tickets for CA$20 ($15) and it was valid on all public transportation for 24 hours.
Unlike the buses in New York, you don’t have to close your stroller. You can simply roll your way on and block some pull down seats. The bus goes express to the downtown area and it takes about 45 minutes in traffic. Throughout the entire ride, the boy’s behaved and occupied themselves staring out the window.
Bike riding with toddlers
Montreal is not as cheap as we thought, even with the US dollar being worth more, hotels and activities are pricey. In efforts to see more in a short amount of time we decided to rent bikes with a baby trailer. It cost us CA$68 (US$51) for only TWO hours which was definitely a rip off. We had a baby trailer which was an additional $18/hr and we can’t complain of all that we got to see on our own in Montreal.
Note that all bike rental shops close at 8PM so if you want to make your money’s worth, get a bike early. There’s better deals depending on the rental hours. The bikes we rented included free helmets for all and locks.
Mount Royal Park with Stroller
For this trip I let my husband do all the research and I just followed along with whatever he had planned. I’m very anal about knowing every little thing about a location and its commodities to stroller and we knew nothing off Mount Royal Park.
Not knowing of the difficulty or length, we decided to walk the path all the way to Mount Royal’s lookout point. On maps it didn’t look that crazy but when we got there, we were hit with reality. There are a bunch of stairs or a very very long( almost never ending) wheel friendly uphill path that wrapped around the park.
After pushing, sweating, and almost dehydrating, we made it to the lookout point by taking short cuts and carrying the stroller through stairs. If we didn’t have kids, it would of been a quick 20 minutes walk up stairs but this is parenthood. Never have we worked so hard for the gram! At the top, we realized that you can just drive to Mount Royal’s parking lot or even take a shuttle bus or Uber there and then walk 10 easy stress free minutes to the look out point. Again, I DID NOT do any research, my husband did. Now we laugh about it but it was definitely my workout for the month.
Drone Stuck in Tree!
I’d like to tell you a short, fun, and stressful story of Mount Royal Park. On our first afternoon in Montreal, we decided to walk to the park right next to our Airbnb and scope out the area. Well at one point, my husband decided to fly his drone around the Monument à sir George-Étienne Cartier and while doing so the boy’s ran on top of him causing the drone to fly straight into the top of a tree.
The tree was unclimbable for us and had to be the tallest tree in the park. This incident ruined the rest of the day for us since we thought we had lost the drone forever. In search of a solution, we walked to the local fire department and they agreed to help us BUT there was a music concert going on in the park and the street were blocked for cars. Seeing that this wasn’t an emergency, they ultimately could not help us. We returned to our stay devastated and stressed (literally did not sleep all night) with zero hopes of getting it back.
The next morning I woke up early and called every tree cutting company in Montreal until one finally answered and gave me a quote of CA$250 (US$180) to rescue the drone. It sounds like a lot but my husband’s drone cost a lot more money so it was worth the spending. An hour later we had our drone back in perfect conditions and were able to continue exploring Montreal. Thank you Services Arbor Pro inc that was the end of that stressful situation.
Walking in Montreal
If you’ve ever been to San Francisco then the streets of Montreal are basically a smaller version of those same hills. A lot of spots were walking distance from each other but beware… We avoided a few hills by walking past certain block but it was still a work out. Get ready to sweat in the summer pushing a stroller up and down hills.
Airbnb vs. Hotels
We stayed at an Airbnb and it wasn’t as economical as we’d like it to be but it did save us a lot more than staying in a hotel. We searched hotels and since the summer is high season in Montreal, it was way over our budget. The cheapest hotel we saw for next day booking started at $350/night in the downtown area, WOAH! We stayed at two Airbnb’s because we weren’t sure how long we’d really be in Montreal and it all worked out.
The first Airbnb only cost us US$70 for a cute studio and the 2nd Airbnb for two nights cost us US$170. I always recommend Airbnbs because they are cheaper and most of the time you have access to a full kitchen were you have the choice to buy and prepare your own food. The boy’s slept on a low sofa bed or in bed with us.
The Botanical Garden in Montreal
At first, I was like ehh do I really want to spend CA$48 (for two) to read about plants and trees? Well let me tellllll you, it was soo worth it! It’s huge and they do a really great job at having activities in all areas of the garden. I’ve never been so stimulated by a garden than in Montreal.
They had everything from well built Asian gardens and museums to interactive sculptures and live sheeps. I mean, who has sheeps roaming freely in a botanical garden? Montreal does.
The kids really enjoyed running around, feeding the fishes, and interacting with everything. It’s also the perfect location for multiple photo opportunities so check it out. Security isn’t heavy and food options are limited so bring your own meals.
La Fontaine Park
We needed a break from walking and wanted to let the boys run wild without worrying about them so we went to La Fontaine Park. It’s a huge park with a large lake and multiple playgrounds.
The kid’s playground is full of sand so we were relieved to know they wouldn’t get hurt that easy and it has a kiddy pool which was fenced off from the rest of the playground. Finally someone designed a playground with common sense. I hate that NY uses metal and rubber and doesn’t fence off their wet areas. Anyway, we saw a lot of locals enjoying bottles of wine and barbecuing in the park and we even ran into a Haitian Music Festival.
Vegetarian Food
We were really surprised at the vegetarian options available in Montreal. It seemed like every restaurant was promoting their new vegetarian/vegan dish so finding something to eat was not hard at all. Our favorite spot, although pricey, had to be Resto Végo St-Denis in the Latin quarters. It’s a buffet where you pay per lb for whatever you choose and everything was so good! It even motivated us to try new dishes at home.
Fireworks Finale
On our Uber ride to the bike rental shop our driver had informed us of a firework festival that was having its finale that weekend so we did our research, hopped on a train, and ended up at the Jacques Cartier Bridge. We rode the metro all the way to St. Helen’s Island and then walk a short 15 minutes to the bridge. Note that the metro does not cater to strollers or wheelchair passengers. None of the stops had elevators which required us to lift the babies up stairs or ride the escalators.
We didn’t get to explore much of the Island but I do recommend you go and check out the Biosphere Environmental Museum, it looked amazing from the outside.
The firework show was the end of our trip in Montreal and it was completely free. The boy’s enjoyed the show and in all it made our trip even more memorable.
What we thought would be a quick and easy trip to Montreal turn into a lot of walking, sweating, crying babies but throughout the weekend it improved a lot and we are so blessed to check off another city on our travel list. I also realized that it’s much harder keeping the boy’s in the stroller now that they want to explore and touch everything so this trip gave me a new perspective for planning future travel plans with more activities for them to do. If you have any questions, shoot me an email or DM on instagram @simplory.