This month we went on our most complicated family trip yet! It was a week shorter than last year’s summer adventure, but it required more flexibility from the kids, and we tried to follow their interests when we could. Hold on to your hats, people, this is going to be a long and wild adventure!
We started off by flying to Montreal (plane ✅) and hung out there for a few days. Tycho noticed a museum with pirates and knights when we were walking around, so of course we had to go! It also had this really neat interactive kid-centered exhibit on Montreal’s alleys. They’ve been used for a lot of things over the centuries, but now many of them have been “greened” and are community spaces! Top marks to Montreal. And of course we explored using the subway and bus system (subway train ✅, city bus ✅)
Max quickly realized he was missing our bikes so we rented some (bicycle ✅) and went exploring down the Lachine Canal path to a cool market. The kids of course just wanted sushi but we awkwardly got a melon too. Nova quickly tired of the weird tag-a-long bike she was riding with Max, and so after they made a quick change to a trailer, we all met up on Parc Jean-Drapeau on Île Notre-Dame…. and got to ride the F1 circuit! This was such a wild adventure. Mostly carfree, but lots of hardcore cyclists! Tycho didn’t really understand where we were and we had to explain Formula 1, ha. And then we took the ferry back to Vieux-Montréal! (Boat ✅)
We took Via Rail (long distance train ✅) to Québec City – played some cards, had a picnic lunch, read. We all love trains so much! Alas, when we got to QC, it was the middle of a brutal heat wave and of course Nova got sick the very first night of four – we barely made it out of the walled part of the old city! But we got to stay in the “castle hotel” (the Chateau Frontenac in the center of the Old Town) and every night there were multiple street circus performers right outside in the hotel! Truly the kids’ favorite part, we’d get ice cream and watch circus. An unexpected theme of the trip after our circus show in Montreal! We had a couple of excellent splash pad adventures too – huzzah! (We took a ferry to one, natch).
Then we rented a car (the horror! also car ✅) for theme #2: waterfalls! We went to Montmorency Falls just outside of the city (took the gondola up!) and then ventured onto Île d’Orleans for pizza, wine, and soft serve. Plus a farmer’s market haul for our Airbnb! We drove over to the south side of the St. Lawrence River to stay a couple of nights in Bas St Laurent / Quebec Maritime. We had hoped to get a little further into the peninsula and be able to explore Parc National du Bic, but we were just wiped and couldn’t face the drive. Instead we enjoyed making meals in our riverside cottage, watching the sunset, listening to the tide come in and out, and so on. We had a little “happy hour” with our wine from Île d’Orleans with cheese and snacks – turns out Tycho and Nova are really into sour cream and onion Pringles?! Did not see that coming. We had a little adventure up to Kamouraska for some tide pools and found some cool little stops on the way – including the Maritime Museum! Another discovery-turned-highlight – we decided to do the Maritime Museum instead of the aquarium before we headed to the airport, and it was so awesome! The kids got to climb all over an old icebreaker and we had a peek into an experimental hydrofoil from the 1960s. So wild – you had to be certified as a sea pilot and an airplane pilot to steer it!
Overall, the kids did so well with rolling with the punches and being flexible when things didn’t quite work out or had to change. Our Porter Airlines flight to Toronto City Airport was rather delayed but they just enjoyed the kids’ area and snacked and read (love the little free library in the airport!). We had exciting plans to take the 90 second ferry from the island airport to the “mainland”, but we ended up just missing it and decided to just walk through the tunnel instead, ha. Toronto was a whirlwind of highlights. We arrived Saturday evening and had a 8pm dinner at a loud and trendy Thai place (Tycho was a little overwhelmed.) Sunday we toured the CN Tower, watched the Toronto Blue Jays game from a restaurant in the Marriott that’s in the stadium (! I’ve heard of airport hotels but not stadium hotels !), and took a ferry to Centre Island where we went for a walk and the kids splashed in Lake Ontario. Monday we did a little “walking tour” (i.e. we got bagels and coffee in a hip area and ate them at a cool playground) before we grabbed our suitcases and left. But it was so fun, and Tycho is already talking about how he wants to visit Toronto.
And of course this was all during the Air Canada strike, so as we were driving to the Quebec airport I was making backup plans in case our flight to California four days later ended up being canceled. (It was, but we were already prepared!) Instead of driving to Niagara Falls, Ontario, spending a night, and driving to the Toronto International airport, spending the night at an airport hotel and leaving at 9:30am, we got to do something way more fun! First we took the GO Train from Toronto to Burlington (commuter train ✅), where we boarded a fancy double decker coach (commuter shuttle bus ✅) to Niagara Falls, Ontario. After we spent the night and did all the touristy stuff, we walked across Rainbow Bridge (walking ✅), did US Immigration on foot (achievement unlocked?!), explored the New York side of Niagara Falls, and then took an Uber to Buffalo airport in the morning (rideshare ✅)
But back to Niagara Falls, Ontario. We arrived at our hotel room only a little motion sick from the bus and to the kids’ amazement they could see the falls from our room. (“Mama, this is SO cool! Look at it, Mama!”) We had a fancy dinner overlooking Horseshoe Falls (did you know Niagara Falls is actually three distinct waterfalls??), played hide and seek in a little park, and then went to the old Niagara Power Station which recently reopened as an amazing museum. (Another unplanned theme!) We got to walk the old water discharge tunnel to the base of illluminated Horseshoe Falls, so cool! And – brace yourselves – we took a funicular to get back and forth between the falls and our hotel (funicular ✅). We watched the fireworks from our hotel room and went to sleep. Kristan got to have an awesome sunrise run along the falls trail, we had breakfast, and then we headed out for our boat tour. The boat tour will forever be a highlight of Tycho’s childhood… because he absolutely lost it. His poncho broke immediately, his camera was finicky, it was SO WET from the spray. Complete and total meltdown! Poor kid. Thankfully the novelty of walking to the United States was enough of a reset! Just in time to explore beautiful Niagara Falls, New York.. which was basically just Indian restaurants, the Rainforest Cafe, and a so-so waterfall park?! Weird to have such a direct comparison. Canada has done a way better job of providing tourist activities, paths, signage….
Let’s take a breather now and check in. For those of you counting at home that’s…
- airplane
- subway
- city bus
- bicycle
- boat
- long distance train
- car
- gondola
- commuter train
- shuttle bus
- funicular
- walking
- rideshare
THIRTEEN modes of transportation!!! We are so pleased with ourselves.
From Niagara Falls, we did the logical thing and flew to San Diego to go to Legoland! (Always end on a highlight, I say!) Two nights at the Lego Castle Hotel (am just now realizing that “castle hotel” was also a theme of this trip… circus, castle hotels, fireworks, transportation, cool museums…), which was the BEST. We had so much fun. The kids built so many things, we went on all the rides, there were no lines except for the lazy river in the waterpark (??), we ran into one of Tycho’s preschool classmates numerous times (WHAT?! why is San Francisco like this). We all had a blast.
And then we came home for the first day of school. Can you believe Tycho is a second grader?!
Ah at last. We have reached the end of this blog post, and that of course means that we have come to the soon-to-be-famous SECRET WORD. To those who are new, the SECRET WORD is a chance for you to benefit, just for reading this blog post. It is our way of saying “thank you” for putting up with our shenanigans. Please remember the rules: Only one per reader, don’t tell your buddy if they aren’t a blog subscriber, and always use a hushed or secret agent voice when saying the SECRET WORD. This month’s Secret Word bonus is a beer with us. We usually make you buy your own beer, but for you wonderful people, we will buy you a beer the next time we hang out if you say the Secret Word: ALE ABOARD!
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