Do you know what happens when you invest in art and culture? You have a city filled with it! (And, by the way, you have lots of people coming to experience it and spend money in your city.) From large festivals to small street fairs, there’s always something inspiring and entertaining around the next corner in Montreal. Of course we spent a ton of time at Montreal Completement Cirque, back in full joyful, creative, exciting force this summer. We were fortunate to attend over 25 circus performances of all sorts (some of which included Chase!). We did not realize until this year how much of a homecoming Completement Cirque can be—we reconnected with Smirkus parents we had not seen since before the pandemic and got to know ENC parents we’d never met. It was also really wonderful to see so many individuals we’d known as kids now living their dreams as successful circus artists.

It was not all circus, however! We also took a fabulous walking tour of the MURAL festival (well, it was fabulous until the heavens opened in one of those sudden rainstorms that Montreal is apparently famous for), cycled along the Lachine canal (we would have liked to do more of that), wandered the fabulous botanical gardens—there was a lot of walking! In fact, two weeks in a row, we did over 100K steps.

It’s a good thing we did all that walking, because there was also a lot of eating (and maybe some drinking). The food scene in Montreal is large and varied (although we did discover that places close early, which is an issue when you’re out and about til all hours of the evening enjoying circus!).

Some of our favorites: Barley (so good we went twice, which we NEVER do!), Larry’s (we remember going here the very first time we took Chase to Completement Cirque as a kid), and Bar St. Denis (we stumbled on this place when everything else was closed, and we are so glad we did!).