An invitation to visit Montreal

May 10, 2016

I may have had ulterior motives in taking you on the tour of our Montreal apartment. But they were good ulterior motives.

If you are interested in traveling to Montreal this summer, I'd like to share our home with you and your family.

We won't be here. We're going west for six weeks. Somewhat surprisingly since at the beginning of the year this didn't seem financially possible for us. It's still going to be tight, but we have free accommodation and a great car to get us where we need to go. Which in this case is Montana for three weeks, Alberta for two weeks and an extended weekend of camping with friends in Ontario on our way back home.

We will not be in Montreal for all of July and half of August and we want to share our apartment with you. It's a freebie, with a small amount of cat loving in return, our cat Pippin will not be traveling west with us. (Pixel died this spring. Last week and that's a story I'd rather not tell right now.)

We have a list of contacts who are potentially interested in housesitting/having a free place to stay in Montreal, and a couple confirmed stays, but there are gaps in the schedule and I keep coming back to the idea of inviting blog readers to stay at my home.

Some people would say this is crazy. But what's an internet community if not a little crazy?

Remember the days when people blogged under pseudonyms? Well, this is pretty much the opposite of that kind of blogging.

Airbnb is an option I suppose for "renting" out our house while we're gone and Mind My House is a global housesitting matching service. But when I thought about doing either of those I kept thinking I'd rather have people with whom I share some kind of connection stay here. I'd rather have you stay here.

I have corresponded with many blog readers through the years and gotten to know internet contacts and friends on a much deeper level than an Airbnb recommendation. You've told me about your kids and your marriages, your joys and sorrows.

There's no easy way to contact all the people I've met via the blog. The best means of communication is my blog.

So here it is: If you're a blog reader and want to visit Montreal this summer and are interested in staying at our apartment for your vacation/holiday/travel please contact me. I have enough responses from people to meet our need this summer. Thank you.

For those of you concerned about the risks of opening up my home to strangers from the internet I assure you, people will be vetted.

Because of this blog I have met amazing people who live all over the world. Some of these people have shown us hospitality on our travels. A few years ago we took a working road trip and were hosted by online friends. A couple years before that Damien and I went out west and were shown hospitality by more blogging connections. And we were hosted by blog readers all along our Appalachian Trail adventure. I was astounded by the generosity people showed us. It is unfortunate I did not have the time share all those stories as they happened, they are some of my best trail memories.

You know what generosity and hospitality does? It begets generosity and hospitality. And because I am not always able to give back directly to the people who gave to us, I want to pay it forward.

That's the ulterior motive. To pay back some of what we've been given. And of course we do want a loving family or individuals to feed our cat and keep an eye on him.

Montreal is an amazing city in the summer. You should come.

In case you need convincing here are a few posts about Montreal:

• Thoughts on city living
• Some photos of the city in October
• City flowers
• Around town
• Urban adventures
• Bixi bike sharing

I look forward to hearing from you.

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