Podcast: Montreal As A Parent

As Montreal braces for its annual mid-winter festival, a lot of which takes place au plein air as they might say, much of the US East Coast braces itself for the kind of frigid, snowy conditions that Montrealers witness 6 months of the year, illustrating just one of the ways they and their city distinguish themselves from the rest of us.

In October 2008, we visited Montreal for the first time over Columbus weekend (US) aka Canadian Thanksgiving and came home fatter and much closer to our first stroke, but enchanted. Even though we hardly had time to scratch the surface on that brief sojourn, it didn’t stop us describing our chastening experience at the cruel hands of Martin Picard in excruciating detail nor blabbering on garrulously in a podcast about how fabulous it all was. Since then, we’ve barely touched foie gras, but we’ve been jonesing to return. The small matter of having two children making that rather more challenging.

However, last summer we went back, returning as parents to a city we had greatly enjoyed as single folk excited, if a mite apprehensive, to see if our first family vacation would enhance or ruin our fond memories. On our first visit, we recorded a podcast of our reflections from our hotel room in Montreal. This time we also recorded a podcast, except that it took us more than five months to get around to this one and it only features one of us, as the other one was looking after our newborn, so our reflections are, ahem, a little more singular and reflective, and almost definitely more rose-tinted as we recall happy times eating delicious food in warm weather while contemplating what shoveling ten inches of snow in biting Arctic winds feels like.

They say that returning to somewhere you have been happy is a mistake, but in this case, viewing it through the eyes of our adventurous three year-old, it was a real joy and revealed layers of the city that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. These included more casual eateries, markets, parks and attractions (like the excellent Montreal children’s museum) and the rolling countryside surrounding the city, many of which we mention in the podcast, all of which are listed below.

As amateur gourmets, we had found our son’s erstwhile reluctance to try new foods frustrating, but since our visit to Montreal he’s a changed kid, and well on the way to emulating his parents. Of course, since returning home, we’ve had to step up our game in preparing meals for him, but in many cases that means he eats the same dinners we do. Real child developmental progress and wonderful memories of a great family vacation? Now that’s the stuff dreams are made of…

via:http://www.weareneverfull.com/podcast-montreal-as-a-parent/