A weekend in Montreal

First of all, sorry for the lack of blogs recently. I have no real good excuses apart from tiredness (don’t ever let anyone tell you that being a waitress is easy!), being addicted (ADDICTED, I tell you!) to the book I was reading*, and being slightly daunted at how much I now have to share! I hope this update helps to redeem myself somewhat and I promise not to leave you alone for so long again for as long as I have wifi 🙂

There is a lot I need to tell you about – our weekend in Montreal, a dead famous racoon, the time I ventured into Honest Ed’s, our day trip to Niagara Falls and of course a whole host of excellent places to eat and drink. First up – Montreal…

We spent a lovely weekend in Montreal at the beginning of July to celebrate Ross’ birthday. Montreal feels much more historic and European than Toronto, boasting some stunning French architecture, with the iron staircases outside many of the houses and the cobbled streets giving it plenty of rustic charm.

Many residents are bilingual and French is more dominant than English here. I quickly learned that I shouldn’t reply ‘Bonjour’ to be polite as they would then continue to speak in French and realise – due to my bemused expression – that I had no idea what they went on to say.

Chapelle Notre-Dame de Lourdes – a beautiful church

Palais de Justice

Aldred building

Chaetau Ramezy

Montreal City Hall

Things I discovered in Montreal:

1) Cider sangria exists (and it is wonderful!)

2) The birthday boy wanted to go to La Ronde, the Six Flags Theme Park at Jean-Drapeau park. I think we seem to be attracted to places on the busiest days totally unaware of what’s going on, like the time we were in Rome during the canonisation of two popes… oops! Anyway, La Ronde was heaving as it was the weekend after Canada Day (July 1st), with lots of families there to see the fireworks. With killer queues, we only went on two rollercoasters but that was absolutely fine since I found that I get too motion sick to enjoy them any more (is this a sign of ageing?!).

3) If you like eggs, Eggspectation is the place for you. It was so good that we went back the next morning.

4) Mont Royal (the huge park to the west of the city) is great for a more challenging walk, and the view from Kondiaronk Belvedere was well worth the effort. The Mont Royal Cross (a steel cross sculpture which lights up) marks another viewing point in the NE of the park. The story behind the cross is that in the 1600’s the city’s founder erected it to thank the Virgin Mary for stopping some devastating floods.

View from Kondiaronk Belvedere, Mont Royal

Chalet du Mont-Royal

A nice view point on the way to Mont Royal Cross

Mont Royal Cross

5) From the Old Port, we walked along Canal de Lachine a little way and we saw evidence of its industrial decline such as the disused grain factories, but there are also new signs of life, with tourism making the Canal particularly attractive to cyclists.

Disused grain elevators along Canal de Lachine

Habitat 67 – designed by Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. The concrete maze holds over 140 apartments.

We even saw a brave (read: stupid) woman abseiling – face-first – down a dilapidated tower. If you’re an adrenaline junkie, I’d recommend trying the MTL zipline at the Old Port instead!

Delapidated tower at Old Port

Crazy abseiler – thankfully she made it to the ground in one piece!

6) Montreal loves its festivals. There were more festivals going on than we could keep track of. Our hotel was in the middle of the jazz festival so the streets were lined with stages and stalls. There were festivals for film, fireworks, comic-con, Jamaica and more!

Jazz festival on Rue de St. Catherine

7) …and artists love Montreal. There are so many galleries, artists selling their work on street stalls, and art spilling out onto the street and onto buildings too. Here are some of my favourites:

Can you name them all?

That’s all for now. Very soon I’ll let you know how we got on last weekend in Niagara Falls.

* ‘And the Mountains Echoed’ by Khaled Hosseini – the latest book from author of ‘The Kite Runner’ – highly recommended!