First visit to Canada this weekend since we decided to start the immigration process. Visited Montreal for the first time and it was…a lot to process. Many, many, many pros and cons, but my highlights are:
Pros:
* Very impressed by the bicycling infrastructure. I knew about Bixi already, but the amount of bicycling lanes, etc is impressive, especially for a (very) cold weather city.
* Loved all the parks dotted all around the city. In Philly, there are a lot of neighborhoods that don't have much green space at all, so this was a treat. Parc du Fontaine was especially awesome on a holiday weekend. So much activity, yet it didn't seem too crowded.
* Both the Atwater market and the Little Italy market were very impressive. Again, compared to Philly, it puts both our Italian Market and Reading Terminal to shame.
* The metro was amazing, efficient, and fast to get to a lot of places.
* Everywhere we went felt very safe. Lots of activity pretty much all day and night.
Cons:
* Not as walkable as Philly. I kind of have unreasonable expectations, but because there are so many traffic signals and no one crosses against the lights, it takes a long time to walk anywhere.
* Metro doesn't go everywhere.
* Neighborhoods aren't very distinct; somewhat monotonous. Philly neighborhoods have this problem too. Hard to really get a sense of this in just two days, but I almost always felt like I was in the same place throughout the city.
* Aside from the old stuff (and the Olympic Stadium), not a lot of striking architecture. Philly has this problem, too. I expected more from Montreal given how much interesting new stuff there is to look at in Toronto.
* People seem a little frosty for Canadians. I know they have the reputation, but I figured they'd still have some Canadian niceness. Our host told us that people don't generally socialize with their neighbors in Montreal, which is something that is great about our current neighborhood in Philly: We know everyone on the block and everyone helps each other out (with pets when away, package delivery, etc). All the service folks we interacted with were great, though, and we had no problems interacting in both minimal French and in English.
One thing traveling and considering living somewhere else does is make you reflect on your current situation. I definitely see a lot of the pros and cons of where we currently live more vividly now. However, we're still dedicated to immigrating to Canada. Next up: Windsor later this month!