This year was the second (hopefully now annual) BFF girls trip with two of my best friends from high school. Last year we went on an awesome long weekend trip to Iceland.

This year we had our sights set on London, but the airfares for the one weekend that BFF #2 could take a few days off were unrealistically astronomical.

So we reset our sights on Montreal. A fairly affordable long weekend from the East Coast of America.

As we planned our trip, I did what I do on pretty much every trip and looked into whether or not Montreal had a city pass card.

City pass cards are bundled attraction cards that usually work in one of two ways, you either get to select a set number of attractions for a certain amount or you can go to as many attractions covered by the card as you can get to within a certain amount of time.

I prefer the card with the time restriction rather than the quantity of attractions restriction because if you go somewhere and find you’re not very interested, it doesn’t feel like a waste of money to just leave and go do something you like better.

You can check out my reviews of a few other city cards here:

• New York City
• Vienna
• Prague
• Hawaii

I’ve also used the London and Edinburgh city pass cards in the past and lovedthem. The only city pass card I’ve been thoroughly unimpressed with so far is the Amsterdam one since it’s like 90% museums.

Montreal runs their own city pass program called Passeport MTL.

We got the 3 day pass for $113 CAD that included access to public transportation.

Our to do list included:

• Point-a-Caliiere Montreal Archeology and History Complex – $19.13
• Ecoreo Quadricycle Rental – $52.20
• Bateau-Mouche Cruise at the Old Port of Montreal – $26.00
• SOS Labryinthe – $18.75
• MTL Zipline – $16.99
• Casino de Montreal ($25 in Credits) – $25.00
• Eco Tours Montreal – $15.00
• Stewart Museum – $15.00
• Musee D’Art Contemporain de Montreal – $15.00
• Phi Centre – $20.16
• Montreal Botanical Gardens – $20.50
• Chateau Dufrense – $14.00
• The Montreal Tower – $23.75

Total: $281.48 CAD

In reality, we made it to:

• Point-a-Caliiere Montreal Archeology and History Complex – $19.13
• Ecoreo Quadricycle Rental – $52.20
• Bateau-Mouche Cruise at the Old Port of Montreal – $26.00
• SOS Labyrinthe – $18.75
• Eco Tours Montreal – $15.00
• Stewart Museum – $15.00
• Musee D’Art Contemporain de Montreal – $15.00
• Montreal Botanical Gardens – $20.50
• Biosphere – $15.00
• The Montreal Tower – $23.75

Total: $220.33 CAD

So that was a savings of $105.33 CAD.

Not too bad.

The card was helpful because we didn’t really have much of an idea of what we wanted to do and so we just picked activities off the card.

I can also say though that without the card, we probably just wouldn’t have gone on the quadricycle (the most “expensive” activity) – though we did have a memorable time on it. We definitely wouldn’t have gone in the SOS Labyrinthe.

We also probably would’ve been really angry about the Stewart Museum because it is incredibly uninteresting. If you don’t have the card, don’t go. If you do have the card… you still don’t need to go. Though I did very much like this beaver wind vine.

You get the most out of the card down in the Old Port. It’s a total tourist trap and prices are super jacked up on every activity down there. It’s a great place for kids and teenagers but as adults, one afternoon down there was plenty.

I thought SOS Labyrinthe was pretty cool, but we had been walking all day and we were pretty tired. The labyrinth was no joke. If you have older kids or teenagers, they might really love this activity. We were in there for like an hour and a half and cheated to get out.

The favorite activity of the whole group was the kayaking tour. We were actually sent out on our own so it wasn’t much of a tour, but it is a nice little kayaking path and we had fun.

One thing we found was that with a lot of the activities, the metro stops weren’t really that close. We walked the 25-30 minute walk between our hotel and the Old Port a few times and even when we went over to Park Jean-Drapeau it was like a 40 minute walk from the metro out to where the kayaking area was. We wound up renting city bikes for $3.00 to ride over to the Stewart Museum and it still took us like 20 minutes.

Outside the Passeport MTL, we also did the following activities and really enjoyed them:

• Notre-Dame Basilica – $8.00
• The Montreal Observation Wheel – $25.00
• Montreal Ghost Tour – $19.26

And we ate maple candy and beaver tails and I highly recommend both.

Overall, if you really make use of the pass, it’s worth the expense. A budget friendlier option could also have been to go with two days of the pass and spend another day hiking Mount Royal.