For Memorial Day we took a trip up to Montreal, Canada! It was a little spur of the moment trip, but those are always the most fun. I planned out a little itinerary for us to stop at a few places on our way to Canada. It was a 7 hour drive so we left late after Spencer's church meetings on Thursday and got into our hotel about 3 hours away at 1am. We woke up and went to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. I thought Spencer would really like going through this and he did! The girls and I did our own thing since they weren't too impressed but at the end you can shoot some hoops which they liked doing on the smaller baskets.
After our stop there we drove on and saw a sign to stop at Joseph Smith's birthplace. We exited and were able to go into a visitors center and see the monument and see the actual place where his log home used to be. We learned some interesting facts from a senior couple serving a mission there. His house is actually right on the border of two towns in Vermont- Sharon and Royalton. There is a beautiful monument there where his house used to be and it is so beautifully manicured. They take such good care of church property.
After that, we continued on the road to Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks. It's a really cool farm that makes it's own maple syrup and pretty much maple anything. We bought some maple kettle corn that was super good, some cabot cheese (amazing!!!) and crackers and then we had to try the maple creemie that everyone raved about. We didn't think it was very good and didn't have enough of the maple flavor to it but the girls liked it. We walked around the farm for a while stopping to see the goats and then going on a little nature walk to see how they get the maple out of the trees. It was fascinating to see all the lines of tubes coming out of the trees and down the path to the farm. They also have marked the different kinds of trees where I am guessing they get the different kinds of maple (dark, sweeter, light, thick).
Our last stop of the day was at the Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory! We had yet another ice cream and I got an amazing flavor! I can't even remember what it was called but it had all the good things I love. Chocolate, peanut butter, vanilla, brownie bits, waffle cone.. yum! We went on a tour around the factory and learned how the ice cream is made and shipped out. They also showed the line up of the most favorite flavors (half baked being number one and then cherry garcia) and they had flavor graveyard where they have a little remembrance area for the flavors that they have retired and don't make anymore. We also met up with our friends, the Eyi's who we were going on this trip with. Laura had texted me a few weeks earlier asking if we wanted to go to Montreal with them. We were excited to go with them since we don't see them a lot anymore since they moved to Manhattan. Charley and James are still such good friends and it was fun to see them back together. Bergen also liked hanging out with Ely which was cute to see. Laura is pregnant with her third boy and due in June! We loved going on this trip with them!
That night we got to our airbnb which was this cute house that was perfect for our size of group. It was our family, the Eyi family and one other family that had just moved to New York from London. The house fit us all nicely and it was in a great location. So Saturday morning we woke up and took the subway to Atwater Market. It's this really cool outdoor market that had a lot of cheap fruits and veggies. We got a few snacks to share and then rented bikes for the day. We went on a fun bike ride along the water being able to see quite a bit of the outskirts of Montreal. After we went on our bike ride, we walked into the city and went to the Old Montreal part and walked down St. Paul street which has old cobblestone and really cool architecture on the buildings. I stopped in a few bakeries but everything was pretty sold out at that point so I didn't find anything amazing. We walked to the Notre Dame Basilica and let the kids play at the square right across the street.
Afterward we walked a few blocks to let the girls ride on the musical swings. They were these really cool line of swings where they play different notes while you swing. If you are able to get on sync with the person swiping next to you they play even cooler music! After the swings we took an Uber to this really good Portuguese restaurant called Ramados. We stood in line for about 30 minutes (it was out the door) and then got out food to go and ate it at a nearby playground. It was a great day!
The next day, Sunday was a much more relaxing day. We went to church at a nearby meetinghouse and they had the meeting in English which was nice. After church we drove to the temple and walked around the grounds. It's a pretty small temple and it was all gated so we just took pictures from the outside. I loved how the doors were maple and there were also maple leaves engraved around the temple windows and outside walls. After the temple we made our way up to Mount Royal park. You park a little ways down and then walk up about 10m minutes on this dirt path to get an amazing view of the city. It's a 360 view and just incredible of the city below. It is surrounded by water which is cool too. After that we went back to our airbnb and made some dinner that we ate outside. It was a perfect night!
On Monday we woke up and checked out of our airbnb. We wanted to hit the road early because we had a long car ride and wanted to stop at the cheese factory on the way home. I still wanted to try some really good bakeries so Spencer was nice and stopped at two different ones so we could get a few bakery items for the road. Our favorite by far was Mamie Clafoutis Bakery. It had an amazing almond croissant and a delicious pistachio cranberry bar. It was super good!
We then hit the road and stopped just once on the way back at the Cabot Cheese factory. We took a tour and learned a little more about how they make the cheese. It was pretty interested to learn and made me feel a lot better about eating cheese. They just seemed very sanitary and clean and do so many tests throughout the cheese making process to make sure it is the right temp, PH level, and no bacteria is growing. It was cool to see. And then we got to try about 20 different cheese and oh my GOODNESS it was the best cheese I have ever had! Like really so good! We ended dup buying about 6 different cheese to being home because I loved them all so much!! I hope I can order more when they run out because something about hat Cabot cheese is really really good!!
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