Biodome

For many years I have wanted to take my kids to our 'closest foreign city' Montreal in Quebec, Canada. But as always, life interfered and it was one of those things that was on my list of 'some day' but not very high on that list.

 

One complicating factor was that I thought I would have to get passports for all the kids, and the amount of time and money I would need to spend on that never seemed urgent enough.

 

Plenty of excuses were easily found and life went on. Until last year when I was talking with some friends about traveling to Canada and found out that children still do not need a passport to get to Canada. As long as they are 16yo or under, they can get into Canada with just a birth certificate. I double checked the official web sites just in case, but as always, my friends had the correct info.

 

Fast forward to this year when I found myself in the middle of selling a house (amazing how much time and energy that takes!) but the trip to Montreal stayed in my mind as something I wanted to do. The summer went by fast but the good news was that after a few days of school we were going to have a long weekend with Labor Day. I closed my eyes, held my breath and jumped into our Montreal trip!

 

Yesterday we woke up super early and left the house before 7am (yawn!) The trip to Montreal was long but uneventful and the kids were still too sleepy to fight much in the car ^^ Even the border was fast and easy crossing (and yes, the birth certificates were enough)

 

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We started at the Biodome, where they have a lot of different biospheres set up. My favorite one is the tropical rainforest, complete with monkeys, many birds and all kinds of other creatures.

 

One big bird, whose name I can't recall, would walk on the walkway in the middle of all the people. He was very self assured, stopping to pose for pictures and wave at his fans.

 

I had been in the Biodome once, but that was many kids and many years ago and none of the kids who went with me yesterday had ever been there. They loved it.

 

For Sylvia, Erik and Kate I played up the 'first conscious visit to a foreign country' angle. What I like about Montreal is that there is so much French around so it feels more foreign to them. We had fun reading all the signs.

 

We arrived in Montreal around 11am, so the drive was not too bad considering that we made two stops along the way. Definitely something we can do again.