Category: Travel

Montreal is well suited to sightseeing by car, on foot, by bike, or by transit. The subway runs through the metro area and bus routes were plentiful as well. We ended up driving everywhere partly because transit fares add up quickly for a family of five, and partly because it was more convenient for us with young children to take the car. If we flew in to Montreal, I doubt we would have rented a car and we could have made do with the excellent public transit.

We stayed in Montreal for eight days and spent a lot of time seeing all that Montreal has to offer. We rented a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment in the Plateau neighborhood of Montreal. The apartment was located on Rue Fullum between Rue Rachel and Rue Sherbrooke in an apartment building that housed around 20 other apartments.

Mrs. RootofGood and I have visited the Big Apple in the past, but our kids have not.  On our first day in NYC we had lunch plans with Mrs. RoG’s coworker around noon, and we wanted to visit her firm’s equities trading floor before the markets closed, so we decided to drive into midtown Manhattan and park somewhere close so we could ensure our timely arrival.  The tunnel toll from our hotel plus parking all day in Midtown was $30 – about the same as transit fares from the hotel into NYC and then MTA transit fares for the subway in NYC.  Parking in NYC is expensive, but so are transit fares for a family of five.

We made it to Canada, but just barely. I’ll summarize by saying the first five and a half days of the trip to get to Canada were awesome and the last half of the sixth day required perseverance. A lot of it. Some might say the last half day of the journey to Montreal was horrible, but I’ll stick with “required perseverance”. But let’s take things in chronological order.