Funny that it’s almost summer and I’m just getting to this post now. And I wish we had time to do a trip like this for summer too as we’ve also been to Disneyland, Vancouver Island and a bunch of other places together over the years but now all of our kids are involved in a zillion things and planning is tough. This reminds me why it’s really important to travel when kids are young, especially if you want to share trips with friends too. Our trip last year was to Montreal where we met up with our friends from Vancouver for a few days in the same hotel. They would continue on to Ottawa and we were coming from Ottawa and would head to Toronto to finish our trip. My friend chose the Hotel Alt Montreal because of its cool Griffintown location and we both booked the two bed rooms for our families and requested the same floor. We both have two kids in our families and our kids have grown up together so we’re always looking for cool places like Montreal to visit together.
The best part about the Hotel Alt Montreal
The coolest thing about Hotel Alt Montreal is that it has a floor that has sitting areas and a giant outdoor patio. No one else was using this area when we visited so it became our big living room. We ate snacks and played video games and hung out here between our adventures. It really made our stay. I thought maybe we’d regret not having a swimming pool but we were fine because we were busy doing so many other things, I’m not sure we would have been able to work swimming into our schedule.
There is parking at the hotel and we definitely needed a car for this stay.
When we booked the Hotel Alt Montreal had a flexible checkout time, which is really unusual. We all departed early so I’m not sure what time you could actually stay in the room until, but regular checkout is set as a default to noon, so that is already a great start. You could also cancel until 4pm for free on the day of scheduled arrival and this flexibility is so welcome in the post-2020 traveling era. I hope both flexible checkout and free cancellations is something this hotel continues to do.
Is there breakfast included? Are there places to eat nearby?
We did not have a breakfast included package and noticed there was an area downstairs where you could buy things to heat up or eat but they also had some nearby recommendations. We walked to a cafe about 5 minutes away every morning called La Bete a Pain and it had delicious bread and coffee and pastries so this worked out just fine. We ate at Restaurant Zibo in the hotel building one night for dinner and it was quite good and also accommodated our group of 8. Adonis grocery store was a close walk away and we bought some snacks for the room to put in our mini fridge.
How is Montreal for a family trip?
With a car, Montreal is a fantastic city for families. We didn’t use the car every day-we could walk to Old Montreal (it was a healthy jaunt) but we needed it to get to some places like all of our bagel stops, the Biodome, the Jean-Talon Market, and a delicious poutine place. My friend arrived in Montreal the day before we did and bought a Passport MTL-this might have helped us a bit, especially the one with three attractions. The Biodome was included when we were there, but it was also incredibly busy and even with the passport my friend also had to lineup for an hour in the same line we did without a passport so it didn’t save time but it seemed a good deal for the price if we were doing a lot of activities. We would probably have bought it if the Montreal tower was open but it was under construction when we visited. We absolutely loved the Biodome even though it was crowed. It was pretty awesome to see a place like this, a place that felt like a zoo but entirely indoors and separated into five different ecosystems.
Both of our families also stopped at the big Orange (Gibeau Orange Julep) on the way into Montreal and it’s famous for their Orange Julep drink and it’s nearly 100 years old. We visited St Viateur bagels and Fairmount Bagel and both were delicious. We enjoyed poutine at La Banquise and the line up was extremely long but it was also fun to try, the portions were enormous and we loved the unique flavor combinations.
Across the street from La Banquise is a park (La Fontaine Park) with a really cool restaurant called Robin du Bois that is a social profit restaurant. If we head to Montreal again I would love to dine here. I bought a few things but we were already stuffed from our poutine when we happened upon this space. I really admire restaurants and cafes that give back to their communities like this and the Robin du Bois space was really beautiful too. Nearby I also have a Kong Amann Bakery pinned that we didn’t get a chance to go to and need to one day but after our walk to the park we ended up near Frisquet and the kids miraculously found room to share ice cream sandwiches.
Other than the coffee at the bakery we stopped by every morning for breakfast we loved a coffee shop we found walking near the Jean-Talon Market. It was called Cafe Ferlucci and we had affogatos that were so dreamy and the kids had Italian sodas with soft serve that disappeared quickly.
There is a lot to see in Montreal and we could have spent way more time here (I wish we had a chance to go to Quebec City too). One night us grownups made it out to a Comedy Show (just the grownups and it was fun) And if we went to Montreal all together again, we also talked about wanting to go to a Cirque du Soleil show here because this is where the headquarters is so this would be the coolest thing. (and somehow we never thought about this when we planned.)
Have you ever been to Montreal? Do you have a favorite spot to visit in this city? (PS. our visit to Montreal was part of a East Coast Canada trip from Seattle-we flew into Toronto where we went to the CN tower, Stayed at the St Regis and went to the Hockey Hall of Fame.)
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
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