5 Best Day Trips From Montreal
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Montreal’s own sights fill 3 to 4 days comfortably, our 7-day itinerary shows exactly how far that stretches without ever leaving the city. If a trip runs longer than that, or a free day lands before a flight home, five destinations sit within reach without turning a Montreal-based trip into a road trip. For everything inside the city itself, see our full Montreal guide .
5 day trips, at a glance
| Day trip | Distance | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Montérégie / Mont-Saint-Hilaire | ~40-45 min | The closest option, apple and cider country |
| Eastern Townships | ~1-2h SE | Wine route, lake towns, fall foliage |
| Laurentians / Mont-Tremblant | ~1.5h N | Ski village in winter, lakes and hiking in summer |
| Trois-Rivières | ~1.5h NE, on the Quebec City rail line | A scenic stop, easy without a car |
| Quebec City | ~3h by car or VIA Rail | The marquee pairing, better as an overnight |
Montérégie and the Eastern Townships, the true day trips
Montérégie, and specifically Mont-Saint-Hilaire, is the closest genuine day trip at 40-45 minutes, apple orchards and cider producers that peak in early fall. Further out, the Eastern Townships (Cantons-de-l’Est) run 1-2 hours southeast and cover a proper wine route alongside lake towns like Magog on Lake Memphremagog and the villages of Bromont and Sutton, foliage season here rivals anything in New England. Both need a car, there’s no direct train service to either.
Mont-Tremblant and Trois-Rivières
The Laurentians, about 1.5 hours north, center on Mont-Tremblant, a ski village in winter and a hiking-and-lake destination in summer, easily stretched into an overnight if the schedule allows. Trois-Rivières, also about 1.5 hours away but northeast, sits directly on the Quebec City rail corridor, making it the rare day trip on this list that doesn’t require a car, VIA Rail from Gare Centrale gets you there without one.
Quebec City, worth doing properly
Quebec City is the trip everyone asks about, and it’s genuinely worth the detour: Old Québec is a fortified colonial district and an actual UNESCO World Heritage Site, unlike Montreal itself, which is a UNESCO City of Design, a different kind of designation entirely, with the Château Frontenac as its landmark. The honest catch is distance, about 3 hours each way by car or by VIA Rail (5 trains a day), which makes a single day trip mostly travel time. An overnight turns it into a real visit instead of a rushed one; if that fits the schedule better than a fifth day in Montreal, it’s the better call.
Sugar shacks, a spring-only add-on
If a trip lands in late February through April, ask locally about a cabane à sucre outing, 45-60 minutes from the city, a genuine maple-syrup-season meal that doesn’t exist the rest of the year. It won’t be running any other month, so don’t plan around it outside that window.
One concrete tip: only Trois-Rivières and Quebec City run on VIA Rail from Gare Centrale, everything else on this list needs a rental car, factor that into which day trip actually fits a car-free Montreal trip.