Montreal was awesome!

Yes, we are back from Montreal. The trip was wonderful and we had a super nice time despite a couple snags and snafus. Pictures will have to wait until tomorrow, because we took so many it might take me awhile to sort through them all. We left Friday morning in the rain, and hit Burlington, VT around noon.... in the rain. We really just wanted to have a bit of a look around and have some lunch. When we parked the car, we didnt' realize it was a spot reserved for only 15 minutes, so we came back to a ticket on the windshield. Not an auspicious start to the trip! We crossed the border (in the rain) with our spanking new passports. They didn't stamp them! We were disppointed. We wanted stamps. We stayed at the Marriottt Residence Inn in downtown Montreal. I LOVE being a AAA employee. Because I completed a Marriott online training course, I get rooms for a very large discount at Marriott hotels. Our four nights in Montreal PLUS $25/night for parking cost us only $375 altogether! Sweet! Friday night we walked down a few streets (in the rain) to a jazz club. It was very, very cool. They had a guy playing jazz on the piano when we got there and he was amazing. Then afterwards, they had a three piece band and a singer. The music and atmosphere were great. The staff were all dressed up in 1920's clothing. It was an experience. Friday morning we had breakfast at the hotel. (more on that later) Then we walked (in the rain) to the tourist center and bought a 3-day Museum and Transportation Pass. This turned out to save us quite a bit of money. We did find out, however, when we bought it, that the Biodome was closed because workers were on strike. I was disappointed as this was one of the places I most wanted to go. We left there and walked (in the rain) to the Museum of Fine Arts. All I can say is WOW! The place was huge and unbelievable. Their special display was Tiffany glass art. So gorgeous. They had a lamp that would look really nice in our living room! The museum was on both sides of the street with a walkway underground in between. The underground part was filled with artwork as well! We ended out being there for four hours. Then it was time for the real purpose of our visit to Montreal. We went and retrieved the car and went out to Lachine for Jamie's football game. Luckily for us, the rain held off during the game. The team didn't have very high hopes for this game....they were playing a team that made it to the finals last year, and four of Manchester's players couldn't make it up to Montreal. However.........they did great! No, they didn't win. But they did score first, and they lost by just a couple of touchdowns. We've seen improvement in every game so far, which is great. After the game we headed back into town and went to dinner at a wonderful Pasta Bar. The place was packed, and the food was delicious. I noticed some of the same things this time that I did last time we were in Montreal. Most of the women are slim....we didn't see a lot of overweight people. And they dress much nicer than us. I also noticed their shoes. Very few sneakers...mostly very fashionable stilettos, even if they were wearing jeans. I was definitely underdressed! More on Montreal tomorrow..........................