Day 10 - Trois-Rivières and Montréal (23 October ‘23)

Today we needed to return to Montréal to drop off the car and be ready to take a coach over the border into the US first thing in the morning. We decided to go via a retail park on the outskirts of Quebec City to pick up some last minute Canada bits to take home.

On the way to Montréal we decided to stop at Trois-Rivières which is a small town on the St Lawrence river which flows through Montréal all the way into Lake Ontario. The weather was much better and so we thought it might be a nice place to visit this small town. It was quite a nice place, with a nice river front and was worth a little look at, however it was like a ghost town. It looked like most places were closed on Mondays and so we opted for one of the only places open, which was an Asian place (surprise surprise!). After a good lunch I joined another band call, while Kirstie drove the next leg. We got into Montréal and made a bee line to 'Place Montréal Trust' which is a shopping mall, but also the location for the Barbie Expo. Yes, the Barbie expo. Not something that was on my list in Montréal, but Kirstie was interested. It was basically an exhibition of a couple of Barbie collections from clearly avid fans. There were cabinets upon cabinets of different Barbie's in their different outfits - pretty cool if you like that sort of thing.

After visiting the exhibition we popped across the road to grab a bite for dinner. We visited the Time Out Market in Lisbon, which is a sort of fancy food court with independent food traders. Think food truck operators moving indoors. It has communal seating so you can go to whichever place you fancy. We loved it in Lisbon and so when we saw there was a Time Out Market in Montréal we thought we would give it a go. It was really busy, but in a lively 'buzzy' sort of way. As I only really needed a fairly light meal, I opted for a Banh Mi from the Vietnamese stall, which is a fancy Pork Roll. It came with a small bowl of soup. I got into Banh Mi's in a big way in Australia as I had to walk through a Vietnamese district on my way to work and so often picked one up for lunch. This one was stunning and took me right back to Melbourne!

After dinner we had a bit of boring business to attend to. We needed to dump our luggage at our hotel, return the rental car to Thrifty via a Petrol station and then find our way back to the hotel on public transport and then repack our bags ready for our journey over into the US. Not the most enthralling way to spend our final evening in Montréal, but a necessary evil. Tonight we wrap up in Canada, tomorrow we start the next leg which is the US.

It is Montréal to Burlington (Vermont), through Vermont and New Hampshire to Boston (Massachusetts) and then through Rhode Island, Connecticut into New York. We are now just over half way through the trip. Time flies...