Josh and I were experiencing a bout of cabin fever and decided to take a somewhat impromptu road trip to Canada for a long weekend in April, with baby J in tow. She has always been pretty good in the car, usually falling asleep immediately, but we didn’t have much experience driving long distances with her. We also hadn’t been away for a weekend just the three of us before, so we were a bit worried about having to pack up all of her stuff and managing everything on our own for four days.
Since half the fun of traveling is eating well, we decided to go to Quebec City and Montreal for a little sightseeing and a lot of good French-influenced food. While Google maps told us that Quebec City would be a 7.5 hour drive, it ended up taking us almost 10 hours altogether, since we had to make a few stops along the way to feed the baby. Other than that, it was a pretty nice drive through the Adirondack region.
We spent two nights in Quebec City, staying at the Loews Hotel Le Concorde, for which we got a great deal on Priceline. It was in a good location just outside the Old City, and we had beautiful views of the St. Lawrence River from our room. We spent one night at Le Meridian Versailles in Montreal, a boutique hotel that was a bit off the beaten path but still near the hustle and bustle of Crescent Street. The downside was that the room was a bit small, and space was extremely tight especially since we had to set up a pack n’ play next to our bed for J to sleep in.
All in all it was a great trip, one that we would happily do again. It snowed on our way to Quebec City but fortunately it was not too cold during the day, and we we were able to maneuver the steep hills of city fairly easily with J’s City Mini GT stroller. The stroller was also pretty good on the residual snow that we encountered, and we powered our way through the slush and mud. We had several really wonderful meals, and we were pretty proud of ourselves (and her!) for getting through the four-day weekend with only one major meltdown at a restaurant. Our little Canadian experiment proved that we could handle traveling with J on our own, and we’re already looking forward to planning our next adventure.
Tags: Canada, Montreal, Quebec City