Starting this week, Montreal’s autumn will cool down and we’ll be entering the season’s normals – cold, windy, wet, gloomy.
All the coolest people we know will be getting out their triangle scarves and spending lots of time at the spa, and we’ll be (openly) envious of those who have time to spend long weekends in the country and work from their lakeside cottages.
For those of us who stay in Montreal, we’ve got a list of free fall activities to enjoy in the city this season…
This fall in Montreal…
A walk in the woods (without a car ride)
We love going for walks on Mount Royal, but it’s not like in the forest. It’s crowded, we can’t spend ten minutes looking for the most beautiful nuts and dead leaves to decorate our Thanksgiving table, the line at the Kondiaronk observatory café is too long…
That’s why we’re going to stray a little off the beaten track, while staying close enough to Montreal to make the walk accessible with an Opus card.
It’s a bit long (obviously, it’s about an hour away by public transport), but the absolute romance of looking out of the bus window while listening to something autumnal (Stevie Nicks?) is free.
Going to the market
Going to the market is technically shopping – we know – but the fall market is also a vibe.
Strolling among the pumpkins and autumn flowers, we can plan our family meals and potlucks and get our hair mussed, but in style.
There are public markets, but also local artists’ and artisans’ markets – and here,we recommend supporting our Montreal creators with a small purchase (after being financially chaste, this is where we’ll be spending to please ourselves)…
Starting a herbarium
From what we’ve read in this year’s Farmers’ Almanac, autumn is going to be cool, wet and windy, with days of warm sunshine and long, cold nights.
Conditions will be perfect for the leaves to redden in the trees quite early (late September) and with sheets of white paper and dictionaries they can be preserved and displayed in frames or placed in books.
A tour of the best Halloween decorations
Halloween is a whole season in Quebec, and in Montreal it’s a whole month of events and signature cocktails with names like boo-on-the-rocks and zombie-tini. In short, October is one of the best months of the year.
Of course, it’s also a month of intense competition; haunted houses (the most haunted), pumpkin spice lattes with natural syrup, concerts, decorations-it’s serious.
Montrealers rival each other in ingenuity for Halloween decorations in the city’s alleyways and most beautiful neighborhoods, and for an afternoon stroll it’s quite enchanting to go and see…
Lovely autumn!