While walking around Old Montreal, we went into the Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal. First off, I never realized that Notre-Dame means “Our Lady.” That seems so stupidly obvious now, but there it is.

At first I wasn’t too excited about paying to go inside since we have been to so many cathedrals and churches in Europe that we were all ‘churched out.’ But man oh man I am so glad we went in! It is SUCH a beautiful basilica, I could not believe how amazing it was inside!

The whole thing reminded me a bit of a geode: the outside is grey and not too impressive – I mean, it is pretty grand but nowhere near as gorgeous as what is inside.

Once inside, they told us there was a free English speaking tour starting in a few minutes. So we decided join the tour, mostly because the ‘tour’ involved sitting down in the pews and resting our tired feet while we were told the history of the basilica.

The carved spiral staircase was one of my favorite features of the basilica!