I Drove My Tesla to Quebec — And It Felt Like Europe

A two-week road trip through Quebec City and Montreal that you can absolutely do in one week

There’s a moment somewhere on the St. Lawrence River — you’re on the Lévis ferry, the wind is cold despite it being July, and across the water the copper rooftop of the Château Frontenac is glowing in the afternoon light like something out of Alsace. A seagull screams overhead. Someone behind you says something in French. You realize, not for the first time on this trip, that you haven’t left North America — and yet nothing about where you are feels like North America.

That’s Quebec. And a Tesla got me here.

The Drive Up: Charging Through the Northeast

I left Columbus, Ohio early on a Thursday morning with a full charge and the kind of optimism that only exists before a long road trip. The Tesla’s Trip Planner had already mapped out my Supercharger stops through upstate New York and into Ontario — and here’s the thing nobody tells you about road-tripping in an EV: the forced stops are a feature, not a bug. You pull into a charging station, step out, stretch, grab coffee, actually look around at where you are. You’re not just passing through — you’re briefly inhabiting the route.

By the time I crossed into Quebec, the highway signs had flipped entirely to French. Bienvenue au Québec. Welcome indeed.

Quebec City: Europe Didn’t Move Here. It Was Always Here.

Quebec City isn’t trying to be European. It simply is — it just happens to be on the wrong continent. Founded in 1608, it’s the only walled city north of Mexico, and when you walk through the stone gates of the Old City for the first time, the cobblestones under your feet have been there since before the United States existed.

Montmorency Falls — Bigger Than Niagara, Half the Crowds

The Château, the Terrace, the Whole Magnificent Stage Set

Changing of the Guard at the Citadelle

Every morning at 10am in summer, the soldiers of the Royal 22nd Regiment — les Vandoos, the only francophone regiment in the Canadian Army — march through the gates of the Citadelle in full ceremonial dress. Red coats, bearskin hats, rifles at attention. I know how it sounds on paper. In person, with the St. Lawrence spread out below and the ramparts of a 400-year-old fortification around you, it is genuinely moving — a piece of living history being performed for anyone who shows up.

The Ferry, the Lower Town, the Vibe

The Lévis ferry deserves its own paragraph. Ten minutes across the St. Lawrence, the full Quebec City skyline in front of you the whole way, Château Frontenac looming larger with every meter of distance you lose. The crossing back is even better — watching the city reassemble itself as you approach. It costs less than a coffee and it’s the best thing you can do in Quebec City that isn’t on anyone’s must-do list.

After the ferry: Rue du Petit-Champlain, the oldest commercial street in North America, winding down through the Lower Town. Stone walls, flower boxes, boutiques selling things that were actually made here. Dinner somewhere with a view — the food in Quebec City is Québécois French, which means it takes French culinary seriousness and runs it through four hundred years of Canadian winter and St. Lawrence seafood. The result is its own thing entirely.

Montreal: A City That Rewires You

If Quebec City is Europe preserved in amber, Montreal is what happens when French culture collides with North American energy and neither one blinks. The result is a city that operates on its own frequency — bilingual and bicultural and entirely itself, with a food scene that punches well above its weight class and neighborhoods that each feel like a different city entirely.

I based myself in Old Montreal, which meant waking up every morning 350 meters from Notre-Dame Basilica. This is not a complaint.

Notre-Dame Basilica and the AURA Experience

The Basilica’s daytime interior — the midnight blue vaulted ceiling, the gold leaf, the hand-carved wood — is extraordinary. I’d seen photos. The photos don’t work. The scale and the darkness and the quiet together produce something that photographs simply cannot carry.

Biodome + Botanical Garden: Space for Life

The Olympic Park complex in the east end houses the Biodome — four complete indoor ecosystems under one roof, from tropical forest to polar Arctic, with live animals in each — and immediately next door, the Montreal Botanical Garden, one of the largest in the world. The Japanese Garden in peak July bloom is the kind of place that makes you slow down involuntarily. I spent half a morning here and could have spent a full day.

Mont Royal and Kondiaronk Belvedere

The mountain at the center of Montreal is the city’s lungs and its great equalizer — everyone goes up, everyone looks out, everyone gets the same view. The Kondiaronk Belvedere lookout gives you the full downtown skyline spread out below you, the St. Lawrence glittering behind it. I went up on a Sunday morning when the Tam-Tams were happening at the base of the mountain — a weekly spontaneous drum circle that draws hundreds of Montrealers who dance and drum and picnic in the afternoon sun. No ticket. No schedule. Just show up.

The Lachine Canal by Bike

I rented a bike and rode the Lachine Canal — the former industrial waterway that now runs as a cycling and pedestrian path through the southwest of the city, connecting Old Montreal to the verdant calm of the canal banks. It’s flat, it’s beautiful, and it ends near Atwater Market, where you can buy everything from Quebec cheeses to freshly pressed juice from farmers who came in from the countryside that morning. This is Montreal at its most functional and its most livable.

Two Museums — Two Completely Different Ways to Understand a City

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is one of the largest art museums in Canada, and it earns its space — a permanent collection that moves from pre-Columbian artifacts to Impressionism to contemporary Quebec art across several connected pavilions. It’s the kind of museum where you go in with a plan and abandon it within twenty minutes because something you didn’t expect to care about has stopped you in a gallery. Allow half a day minimum.

Pointe-à-Callière — the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History is something different entirely, and it is not to be skipped. Built on the very site where Montreal’s original colonists settled in the 1640s, the museum sends you underground through tunnels that wind past centuries-old foundations, illuminated archaeological displays, and the city’s first Catholic cemetery, dating to 1643. The underground archaeological crypt lets you walk through the remains of Fort Ville-Marie — the city’s first European settlement — with carefully preserved ruins and interactive displays that vividly bring history to life. You are walking through the actual ground where Montreal began. Not a recreation, not a replica — the actual ground, the actual foundations, the actual history preserved under your feet. The experience leads through an original underground circuit of archaeological excavations that covers First Nations heritage, the French colonial period, and the birth of the city. I went in thinking I’d spend an hour. I stayed for three.

The Rest of Montreal — A Quick Tour

Mile End — where the bagels are made at 3am and the cafes fill up by 8. The cultural and culinary heartbeat of the city, best explored slowly on foot.

The Plateau — colorful row houses, spiral staircases, golden-hour photography on Rue Rachel, and the best density of restaurant terrasses in the city.

Vieux-Port de Montréal — the Old Port waterfront along the St. Lawrence, best walked at golden hour when the light hits the water and the Bonsecours dome glows copper.

The Underground City (RÉSO) — 33 kilometers of connected tunnels linking metro stations, shopping centers, museums, and hotels beneath downtown Montreal. It’s free to walk, it’s genuinely disorienting in the best way, and the Observatoire Ville-Marie on the 46th floor of Place Ville-Marie rewards anyone who emerges from it with a 360-degree city panorama.

Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral — standing in the middle of downtown, this cathedral is a one-third-scale replica of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Free to enter. Worth twenty minutes of anyone’s afternoon.

Olympic Stadium — built for the 1976 Olympics, the stadium’s distinctive inclined tower and retractable roof are a piece of Montreal architecture that divides opinion but defines the city’s east-end skyline. Walk the exterior, marvel at the scale, appreciate the audacity.

The International Fireworks

I did not plan to watch fireworks from the waterfront. I stumbled into them. The Montreal International Fireworks Competition is one of the longest-running pyrotechnics competitions in the world, and the shows fire from La Ronde over the St. Lawrence, visible from the Old Port. The city gathers on the waterfront. Everyone looks up. The music synchronizes with the explosions. It is a genuinely communal experience in a city that does communal very well.

The Food: An Honest Account

Let me be direct: this trip fed me extraordinarily well without a single piece of meat across two cities and two weeks. Here is what I ate.

Le Don, Quebec City — tucked into the Lower Town a short walk from Petit-Champlain, Le Don is Quebec City’s best fully vegan restaurant and it earns that title without qualification. The menu reads like someone took Québécois culinary tradition and rebuilt it entirely from plants — mushroom preparations that taste like they came from a forest, not a substitution. I went for dinner on my first full night in the city and understood immediately why people come back multiple times in a single stay.

La Piazzetta Vieux-Port, Montreal — in Old Montreal, after a long evening walking the cobblestones, sometimes what you want is a thin-crust pizza and a glass of wine and a room that feels like it’s been there forever. La Piazzetta delivers exactly that. The Vieux-Port location has the atmosphere Old Montreal does so well — stone walls, warm light, the city outside moving at a slower pace than the rest of Montreal. Adaptable for vegan, and the kind of meal that doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is.

Ohana Sushi — vegan sushi that uses konjac, mushroom, and plant proteins to build rolls that taste like the ocean remembered. The kind of meal that makes you evangelical.

LOV on Rue McGill — the full name is Local, Organic, Vegan, which tells you everything. The space is beautiful, the wine list is serious, and the food is the kind that makes non-vegans quietly reconsider their choices over dinner.

La Banquise — the legendary 24-hour poutine institution on Rue Rachel. I had the vegan version at midnight. The gravy was the right kind of wrong. The fries were perfect. The restaurant was full. It is always full.

Lola Rosa — the casual neighborhood version of excellent vegan cooking, the kind of place you’d eat twice a week if you lived nearby. The vegan poutine here is the one I’d recommend to a first-timer.

Aux Vivres — one of Montreal’s original fully vegan restaurants, in Mile End, and the Dragon Bowl alone justifies the existence of the restaurant. Order the Dragon Bowl.

Almond croissants at La Graine Brûlée, the Merveilleux at Aux Merveilleux de Fred, and coffee everywhere on Rue Saint-Denis — two bakeries, one street, competing claims on your morning. La Graine Brûlée does the almond croissant that rearranged my understanding of what a croissant can be — laminated, burnished with almond paste, warm, gone too quickly. I went back the next day. Then I discovered Aux Merveilleux de Fred at the corner of Saint-Denis and Rachel, and it recalibrated everything again. The specialty is the Merveilleux — a delicate creation of airy meringues layered with whipped cream and coated with chocolate shavings or caramelized almonds. The bakery has a grand chandelier and an open kitchen where you can watch pastry chefs work in real time, which is either very charming or very dangerous depending on your willpower. As one visitor put it, the croissants and coffee here rival some of the best in Paris — a claim I am not usually willing to endorse without caveats, but in this case, no caveats. Rue Saint-Denis is the right neighborhood for all of this — residential and unhurried, terrasse cafes spilling onto the sidewalk, the whole street moving at the pace of a city that takes its mornings seriously.

Bota Bota: A Spa on a Boat

In the Old Port, there is a converted boat moored at the edge of the St. Lawrence that has been turned into a thermal spa. This is a real thing. Bota Bota operates on a former ferryboat, with outdoor hot tubs on the deck, saunas built into the hull, and relaxation rooms at various water levels with windows that look out onto the river and the city skyline. The contrast between the cold outdoor air over the river and the heat of the wood-fired sauna is specific and perfect. I did not want to leave. I stayed until they made me.

The Underlying Thing: Speaking French in North America

Both cities are francophone first — signs are in French, menus are in French, the cultural default is French — and while English is easily understood in Montreal, Quebec City requires a willingness to meet the language at least partway. But here’s what this produces: a texture that is entirely unlike anywhere else in North America. The rhythm of French conversation on a terrace cafe. The particular architecture of a neighborhood that has been continuously inhabited and maintained since the 1600s. The food culture that comes from taking French culinary tradition seriously for four centuries in a cold climate near a great river. All of this adds up to something that doesn’t exist anywhere else on this continent, which makes the drive north — however long it takes, however many Supercharger stops you make — absolutely worth it.

Could You Do This in a Week?

Yes. Quebec City genuinely needs only 2-3 days to see the essentials: Citadelle and the guard ceremony, the ramparts, Montmorency Falls (and the zip line), Petit-Champlain and Place Royale, the Lévis ferry. Montreal can be done well in 4 days if you’re focused: one day for the Plateau and Mile End and the food, one day for Old Montreal and Notre-Dame and the AURA experience, one day for Mont Royal and the Lachine Canal, and one more for the Biodome and Bota Bota. That’s a week. Do it.

The Tesla? Optional. But the charging stops made me see parts of upstate New York and Ontario I would otherwise have driven straight through. I recommend both the destination and the deliberate pace of getting there.

Been to Quebec? Share your experience below. Have questions about the route, the restaurants, or charging an EV through Quebec? Leave a comment below.