As I write to you now, it is only a few hours before Ginny and I hop in our cab for the airport to head home to see our peoples – and we are both so ready. We have loved every minute of our time here in this wonderful city. . . but we are both missing our peeps of the two and four legged variety something fierce.

Now though, I have to catch you up on the past few days and what we have been up to. . .

Saturday

On Saturday, we went down to Old Montreal, to the Bonsecours Market, where we both found some lovely prints from a local artist to take home.

Then we were on to the Notre Dame de Bon Secours, known as the Sailors Church. It faces the Port and also holds a museum that is just incredible.

Notre Dame de Bon Secours was founded by Marguerite Bourgeoys, who is now called the First Teacher of Montreal. She founded a Sisterhood that was encouraged to live non-cloistered and participate in the outside world, as she said the Blessed Virgin did not live a cloistered life. Needless to say, this was unheard of in the 1700’s.

The museum took us through scenes from her life then across the gift shop to climb up the tower to see incredible views of the port and the statues up top as well as the Blessed Mother and then down to a tour of the archaeological dig site of the original church – which burned in the mid-1700’s – and where nine sisters are interred.

It was truly – unexpectedly – wonderful.

After our visit to the church, I was off to get my permanent souvenir of my first visit to the city.

After that, Ginny and I got comfy and crashed hard.

T’was a busy and lovely day!

Sunday

Sunday morning we loaded up and went to the Botanical Gardens and it was simply stunning.

 

After the Botanical Gardens, we went back to our hotel for a bit to gather ourselves and then went by the local mall for some supplies – like fizzy water – and we were off to dinner.

We ate at Il Focolaio, a local pizza restaurant – and they were just unbelievable. Two of the staff members lifted my chair into the restaurant because there were only stairs – Mervin is heavy – and, when I went to use the restroom, only to discover it was down a LONG flight of stairs, I turned to find another staff member had literally been chasing me to take me to staff only restroom on the same floor.

Wonderful people.

Apart from that, the atmosphere was just beautiful and both the regular and the gluten free pizza were delicious.

A fabulous experience all around. ❤

Monday

For our last day in Montreal, Ginny and I decided to venture to the Oratory of St. Joseph, known as the church of healing, via subway and bus – a new experience for me – after we had a super yummy breakfast at Ben & Florentine.

What we learned, however, is that the Oratory is absolutely stunning, but it is only accessible by many many (many) stairs, a straight up, totally unsafe for us hill, or a non-handicapped accessible shuttle.

Soooo. . . this particular cripple was SO not getting into the church of healing.

NOPE.

We laughed so so hard about this.

After that, we made one more visit to Old Montreal and did see Notre Dame once more for this trip which made me so happy.

Now we are all packed up and it’s time to get ready to head to the airport.

I will be posting more about our trip soon and there will be more posts about travelling with disabilities and food allergies as well.

This has been just the BEST trip – and I am so ready to see my peoples and kiss Mr. Henry Herring on his lil’ nose. His wardrobe has grown by three t-shirts in Montreal. =D

Montreal, I’ll be back for sure.

Be well, everybody.

Grace and Blessings.

#drinkwater