Montreal is a great place to visit this time of year. We flew out last Friday morning at 6a.m. after hardly getting any sleep. We thought that the flight would be a direct shot from here to Albany since the ticket said nothing about stops, but we were wrong and had to stop in Denver and in Baltimore. We got into Albany NY around 5pm local time and picked up our rental car (a Civic Hybrid, which was really nice 550 miles on 13 gal.) and headed over to a local restaurant to try some authentic Italian food (aka Olive Garden). After that we headed up to Montreal. The drive would have been nice if it was light outside and I wasn't half asleep the whole way there. No problems at the border, but when we got into the city I missed our exit and had to stop and ask for directions on how to get the the road that I wanted. I was told in a thick French accent "Oh, Easy as pie." In all the drive was about 4 hours. When we arrived Mariu (Virginia's sister) was still at the hospital with Jeff (Mariu's husband). But Virginia's parents were at the apartment. So I finally got to meet them in person. They are really nice and really short. As you can see.

So that first night we just hung out at the apartment because Mariu had gone into labor and the ghetto Canadian hospitals are not visitor friendly at all. The next morning was more waiting for news from the hospital.

It was afternoon before we finally got new that we could go to the hospital to see Mariu and Jeff. When we got there the baby was in lock down (aka the nursery with no viewing area) but we were able to see Mariu and Jeff.

Since the labor took a really long time, over 12 hours, Mariu had to stay in the hospital for a while so after we visited for a while we went out to see some of the city with the parents. Here we are at the Planetarium:

Here I am with my kids... I mean my in-laws LOL.


After the Planetarium we went over to the botanical gardens and the insectarium.





Here was my favorite exhibit at the insectarium.




After the gardens we made another trip back to the Hospital.

One of the few good things about that hospital was the view from Mariu's room.

and were able to see little Camila for the first time. She was 2.5 kilos and 50cm when she was born.

The next morning is when Camila was able to be out of the nursery with Mariu.








The next day Virginia and I ventured into downtown Montreal to shop and eat. Here is Virginia going down to the Metro (subway).


As Jeff was giving us instructions to get into the downtown shopping area he told me to go west after we got off the metro in a certain spot. However, since I had no compass I didn't really know which way was west. I started to sense that we took a wrong turn when I started to notice a trend of mostly mens clothing stores and little rainbow flags, and then there was this store/club front:

So, yes, we were in the gay district of Montreal. However we found this really nice restaurant called "Food" and had some really good food.




The next day we went back to the hospital for another visit with Mariu and the baby.

After the hospital we visited St. Joseph's Cathedral and also a look out point above Montreal.




Later that day we went to Notre Dame Cathedral. It was very impressive.



Here a a few of the last pictures before we left on Thursday morning.