Today was a day of exploring Montreal and doing a bit of shopping. The campground we’re staying at is right next to the river shuttle that runs from Longueuil to Old Montreal. While waiting in line, a squirrel butted in front, climbed up on a little step stool and begged for its morning Cheetos from the lady in the ticket booth.

We had chocolate croissants at a cafe and Ruth indulged in a latte macchiato before continuing on our rather lengthy 19km walking trip today. Nearby, a Scottish marching band wasn’t quite ready, but the bagpipes were getting warmed up.

Pierres Saint-Denis is Ruth’s favourite bead store and we spent a good hour selecting beads, tools and accessories. We only need to spend another $200 and then Ruth gets the 30% member discount for life. The owner was amazingly helpful and gave us great advice on some more advanced techniques.

Next up was supposed to be a chocolate supply store that has a vast selection of molds, packaging and, of course, chocolate. That would have to wait a bit, because we got side-tracked at Maison de l’Astronomie, a fabulous shop featuring pretty much anything you could ever want in telescopes and related accessories. Henri-Julien Chartrand enlightened us on the various telescopes and assured us that he would only sell us something when we knew what we were buying. Martin was given homework to watch some YouTube videos and read an instruction manual and was told that there would be a test afterwards. Ruth is already slightly worried about how we’re going to fit a telescope in our van. 😉

We finally made it to Chocolate-Chocolate and were overwhelmed by the number of different chocolate molds and packaging available. Fair warning to neighbours and friends – six different molds and a scraper ended up in our basket and so there will be lots of chocolate making to come this fall.

Now hungry like bears, we headed back towards Old Montreal with a stop at Schwartz’s Deli for Montreal Smoked Meat sandwiches. It is always a pleasure to eat there, although this time there wasn’t a huge lineup as there usually is. This was great for us, because otherwise we would have missed the last ferry back to our campground.

No map today.

Today’s Challenge: Learning to make Montreal Bagels with Will Paquet at the Bagel Class! If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to make this tasty Montreal specialty, this is the place to go! Will was entertaining, a great teacher with a sense of humour and all 12 of us succeeded in almost mastering the art of bagel making. Ruth and Martin represented Team Canada, while the other 10 participants were all from Team USA. Team Canada made the better bagels according to our totally unbiased instructor. 😉

At the end of the class we got to devour our freshly baked, savoury, beautiful creations. Best of all, we got to take home the recipe, so we can now have fresh bagels anytime. We might even share…

Now the looonnngg walk back to the ferry was before us which made Ruth miserable. A calorie rich (and expensive) milk shake helped somewhat and we made it to the Festival International Nuits d’Afrique. A bit of rhythm gave us the energy to continue to the ferry dock.

Cirque du Soleil has a show by the ferry terminal with big tents and we purchased two tickets for tomorrow to see KURIOS.

No map for today.

Today was a more relaxed day, starting with breakfast outside and catching up on our blog posts.

The main activity today was going to see Cirque du Soleil’s KURIOS show. What a spectacular, mesmerizing, and memorable event!

The performance featured amazing feats of strength, precision, skill, story telling and humour. The show captivates you and takes you into a magical, surreal world where the impossible is make possible. One act started with performers sitting at a table and building a tower of chairs at least 8m high and one of the performers then climbing this tower while a second tower was assembled downwards from the ceiling of the tent in an almost mirror-like way.

One of the cutest and most comical acts featured an audience member sitting on a sofa on stage while the “suitor”, tried to impress her while taking on the roles of a bird and cat, communicating solely through gestures, sounds, and movements.

Acrobats performed gravity defying feats that really must be seen to be believed. The precision was astounding! Imagine being launched, flipping backwards and landing on the shoulders of team-mate who himself is standing on the shoulders of two others.

The show, like every other Cirque du Soleil show we’ve experienced, is definitely worth seeing.

After the show we scurried down to the ferry terminal to make it home before the dark skies above opened and released buckets of water. We didn’t quite make it, but were able to take refuge under a tent at the pier. When we arrived at the other side half an hour later, the rain had mostly stopped.

Later in the evening we heard explosions and went out to investigate. There was a massive fireworks display on an island nearby. We had a great view from the shoreline.

No map for today.