Exploring Downtown Helena
One of the best ways to explore a town is to go to its downtown area (unless you’re in Butte, in which case you should head uptown). Unique shops and delicious eateries buzz around downtowns like bees around a hive. However, sometimes, it takes a little bit of orientation to figure out downtown, and Helena has the perfect answer.
The tour train is one of the best ways to start a trip in Helena. I can’t claim that it did a very good job orienting me geographically (leaving the trolley station, it took me 20 minutes to make the 4 minute drive between the capitol and the walking mall) but it does give a good sense of the scope of stories you can find in the Queen City. The hour-long tour takes visitors on a tour of the capitol, through the mansion district and into Last Chance Gulch. The guide points out the most interesting features on each block, telling the stories of the people who have lived there. At the most important (and photogenic) sites, the trolley slows down so that riders can take photos. The tour train works well as an introduction to the city, a way of figuring out what bits you want to see more of. It helps, too, that the train tickets acts a coupons at half a dozen downtown business, earning holders discounted souvenirs and free ice cream. The tour isn’t a replacement for wandering around Helena on foot, but it is a good opener, a way to break the ice between you and the Queen City of the Rockies.
While you’re in downtown Helena, there’s one stop you can’t miss. Begun in 1922, the Parrot Confectionary has been a Helena institution for over 90 years. In fact the store existed as soda fountain even earlier-in the 1910s-but after a change of ownership it reappeared in 1922 as one of Montana’s premier confectionaries. The Parrot occupies part of the bottom floor of the historic Lalonde Building on Helena’s walking mall. Today, the Parrot is famous not only for candies with recipes dating back to the 1920s, but also for its old-fashioned soda fountain, serving up delicious malts, milkshakes, homemade ice cream sundaes, ice cream sodas and flavored colas.
