#1: Walk up Mount Royal

First off, a little geography lesson for those who haven't been to Montreal: Mont Royal (or Mount Royal for you anglophones) is a mountain (or a hill if you compare it to the Rockies really) set in the middle of the city. McGill happens to be right at the foot of it. It's a giant park where people love to go jogging, biking, and so on. On top of the mountain, there is also Beaver Lake (Lac Castor) where you can skate in the winter and have fun outdoorsy times in the summer. Here's a picture at sunset:

Then, about a kilometer further up, there is a chalet and lookout where you can see the whole city. And last night was the night we decided to tackle said mountain.

We made a plan. We were gonna leave about an hour before sunset, to catch it from up there. But neither of us really knew how to get to the top of the mountain. Turns out there's a loooot of ways. Just walk toward the mountain and eventually you will see a path or stairs. We started on this path, and were a bit lost. Someone noticed and gave us some information. Then he added, "on an esthetic note," that Mont Royal was designed by the same person who did Central Park. It's a giant loop until you get to the top, designed to give a sense of infinity. It goes from covered areas with dense trees to open ones, to keep a sense of awe in its audience.

And it's totally true. We enjoyed the loooonnnnngggg walk up (7 km) and eventually got to Beaver Lake, as you can see above. We continued and eventually made it to the lookout. Well worth it when we saw THIS:

SW and I agreed that our pictures did a bad job showing how incredible it is to have the whole city at your feet.

Little extra comment: if you go for sunset, bring a flashlight... We fully expected to get killed on the way down. We took a different way down, following where the lights were, and ended up about 30 blocks away from our houses. Our legs were not happy with us!