Adventures in Montreal: MEETin Invasion!

Monty, our MEETin Montreal mascot, at Jean Talon Market

Each year, one of the MEETin cities hosts an annual global celebration with the help of a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers. In 2010, D and I had a fabulous time at the MEETin Amsterdam celebration where we explored the city with locals and made new friends from Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, London and all over the USA. We must have also done a great job talking about how fun Montreal is because this year the MEETin Celebration regulars decided to gather in Montreal. To help us out with the organizing, the Celebration became an Invasion, where event planners from the other MEETin cities would plan and host events in Montreal.

Sept 18 to 22, we welcomed about 40 people from Amsterdam, LA, Portland, San Francisco, San Antonio, Austin, Denver, New York, Boston, Providence, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, DC, Virginia Beach and Sacramento. Over 4 crazy days and nights, D and I joined them at events ranging from poutine lunch, to museum visits, to dancing at an 80s night club. D even finally became a MEETin member and hosted an event of his own at Dieu du Ciel, his favourite microbrewery.

One of the best parts about having visitors in town is that we took the opportunity sample the poutine we had been meaning to try for years, reacquaint ourselves with favourites in our neighbourhood, like St. Viateur Bagel Café, Schwartz's, and Chez Chose, or discover something new like the cafe near where I work that asked D what country of origin he preferred for his coffee.

Below are just a few pictures from the weekend. A big thanks to all the fabulous Meeps who came to Montreal and made it such a fun four days! We'll keep in touch and will see you again at another Celebration.