Many people went to tropical locations over spring break. A lot of the Instagram posts I saw a couple of weeks ago were of people in Puerto Rico and Cancun, but my friends and I went to Montreal. Why would we go somewhere colder than Amherst for spring break you may be asking? The ability to attend clubs was pretty high up on our list of desires for spring break. It all started in October when my friend Derek had his hometown friends visited UMass for a weekend. They come from Hanover, New Hampshire, and Derek’s two friends CJ and Will both attend Dartmouth, which is coincidentally also in Hanover, New Hampshire. We didn’t think we (Nina, Karenna, and I) were going to spend much time with the guys the weekend that they visited UMass, but we ended up staying up until 2 a.m. the two nights they were there, discussing our deepest darkest secrets. We all got along swimmingly and were immediately friends.
Fast forward to a random Friday night in January before spring break, when Derek was talking about how his friend Neal was planning on going to Canada for spring break. We started talking about our spring break plans; having none, we proposed taking a group trip to Montreal. We all loved the idea but knew that either Nina or I had to plan it in order for it to actually happen. We found an Airbnb a while later and FaceTimed the Dartmouth boys. They didn’t think we would actually go through with the Montreal plan, but they were down, so we paid for the Airbnb for two nights and three days in Montreal.
When the time came to go to Montreal, I drove the Massachusetts people up to New Hampshire and we stayed there for a night. After some successful poker playing and panicking about expired passports, we hit the road for Montreal the next morning. We were all unsure if CJ would get across the border (as he had a 7 day expired passport), so we were all kind of tense on the three-hour car ride to the border. We took the scenic route and walked on “frozen” Lake Champlain. I ended up falling in the ice-cold water (don’t trust ice fishermen) and having to change my jeans before crossing the border…but that’s beside the point. We ended up successfully crossing the border, and the border control person didn’t even mention CJ’s expired passport, much to our surprise. And finally, nothing could keep us from the clubs.
After a tight squeeze into the basement of a parking garage near our Airbnb, we brought our stuff up to the Airbnb which was shockingly nice for the very cheap price. We were initially disappointed by there only being two bedrooms (we paid for three) but there actually was a third bedroom all along that we didn’t find until the second day (long story). The first night was an expensive success. We went to a very chic club called Apt 200 which is pretty popular among Concordia/McGill students in Montreal. We all got home safe, and with much less money in our bank accounts, but it was worth it. The next day we went to a very interesting grocery store to buy cereal, which I was desperately craving, along with a few stores that none of us made any purchases at. The majority of our money was spent on restaurants and drinks. My favorite meal was a chicken sandwich I got at The Burger Bar on Crescent Street along with a drink called The Tourist (ironic, right). Overall, I highly recommend that under-21-year-olds take a trip to Canada or Montreal at some point. It is a very beautiful city (especially Montreal) that has a lot to offer.
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