My mom and I took a mini-vacation to Montreal so that we could spend some time together before I got too big to travel and before being too busy with the baby. I had never been before, but it is a lovely, adorable, laid back city full of window boxes, cafes and pretty architecture.
We arrived on Thursday afternoon, and
went straight to the Hotel Nelligan in Old Montreal, which had many sweet details, such as the faucets and edible displays of delicious green apples. The sweet and helpful concierge recommended lunch at Olive & Gourmando, a small and quirky cafe down the street. I had a really unusual but incredible sandwich of hummus, tofu, pickles and olives and the requisite chocolat chaud. Walking around the city, I loved these birch branches and a display of jewelry templates :
The highlight, however, which I had been looking forward to since we had begun researching the trip was the internationally renown circus school, called La Tohu 's annual student performance (Spectacle annuel de l'école national de cirque). I LOVE the circus (well, human circus) and French Canadian circus is very famous (Cirque du Soleil obv, but also the incredible Cirque Éloize). We hadn't gotten tickets in advance, and all the shows were sold out, but the concierge came to our rescue and got us tickets, which turned out to be the best seats. The show was incredible, and they don't have videos up from this year's spectacle but here is a small montage from 2007.
It doesn't even begin to capture the beauty of seeing it live, but you can get an idea.
My mom and I had actually seen Cirque Eloize's spectacular (literally) show Rain last winter at Memorial Hall and were mesmerized. For videos and dates go this link. It turns out that the founders had all trained at Tohu, and one of my favorite acts, the Cyr wheel was created by a member of the troupe!
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