Beautiful sunny skies greeted our day in Quebec City, and we treated ourselves to yet another leisurely morning of puttering around our apartment. Our host had recommended a bistro up the street, and after a bit of poking around, it looked like a promising spot. We headed over and grabbed a pair of seats at the beautiful bar surrounding a spacious kitchen area. Bistro B had a great modern feel to it–sleek lines warmed up by some interesting wood panelling behind the bar. Our waiter, either because he couldn’t or didn’t want to speak English, stayed almost exclusively in French, which gave David (and me) the opportunity to work on our French.

It was an early morning for us (after days of sleeping in late), as we had a 9 am train to catch to Quebec City. Thankfully, we were packed and ready to go, so it wasn't long before we were headed for the metro with the rest of the morning commuters. After following a labyrinth of underground tunnels, we made it to the train station in good time.

Our last day in Montreal started off somewhat leisurely (unsurprisingly), as we spent the morning packing and doing laundry. Our plan for the day was to explore the Mile End neighbourhood a bit more, which we'd seen a bit of the previous day during lunch at Lawrence. This area was traditionally a multicultural area, home to Jews, Greeks and Portuguese, but has transformed somewhat into being a very hipster, artsy area, with cafés, restaurants and little shops abound.

We had a relatively quiet day planned, with no real sights in store but more an exploration of neighbourhoods. David had noted a coffee shop on our walk to the train station yesterday, so we decided to check it out. Pourquoi Pas Espresso Bar was a small, cozy little café that made a solid cup of espresso, stocking beans from a roaster in Toronto but also kindly recommended a couple of coffee roasters to check out in town. We were soon on our way out to grab some lunch at Lawrence in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal.

We seem to have committed to lazy starts, which, when I'm on vacation, I absolutely don't mind at all. We ultimately lounged around the apartment until lunch time before heading out for the day. First stop: food! We'd passed an interesting looking place on the walk home yesterday that I suggested checking out called La Réserve du Comptoir. It was actually a charcuterie but also served sandwiches and coffee. The interior was chic and minimalist, but the piece de resistance was its glass-panelled meat locker, which customers could sit and peer into.

Well, it was a bit of a rocky start to our first day in Montreal. We were unfortunately awoken by some pretty amazingly loud house music from our neighbours upstairs at 3:30 in the morning. Unable to get back to sleep with that thumping bass overhead, we opted to throw headphones in and watch Interstellar. Mercifully, the music ended about the time that our movie did, so we grabbed a few more hours of sleep (not before emailing our hosts to let them know about the issue). As a result, it was a pretty lazy morning when we finally did get up for the day.

It was a bright and early morning for us. Thankfully, we were all packed up the night before and only needed to roll out of bed and go. We were traveling relatively light, just one checked bag and a roller-board carry-on, so it was easy for us to hop on the bus. It was a beautiful sunny bus ride downtown before we hopped on a surprisingly well-timed Orange Line out to Midway Airport. We were pretty amazed at how smoothly things were going. So I suppose it wasn't surprising when David's laptop set something off at security, and he spent an inordinate amount of time waiting as they went through all of his things with little cotton pads.

David and I came to the rather dismaying conclusion that we wouldn’t be doing hardly any traveling together this year. After the jam-packed travel schedule of 2010, this was a little disappointing. So, in honour of David’s 30th birthday, coupled with our desire to take at least one romantic getaway this year, we decided to head over to Salt Spring Island, one of B.C.’s Gulf Islands that we’d never visited.