Montreal

If you wanted to see what montreal was like, you could just google images ‘things to see in montreal’, and probably find much better pictures than the ones I took. So to make it worth your while to read this, I’ll say more what I did/experienced. My way of exploring a city probably isn’t very normal, I’ll do about 10 minutes of research, compromised pretty much of googling ‘top 10 things in montreal’ and choosing a couple that sound cool, seeing where they are on google maps, and choosing 2 or 3 that are close to each other for that day and keeping in mind the others for another day. For me exploring a city isn’t just about the ‘places to be’, or main attractions, but also what’s inbetween, the parks, small shops, restaurants with patios, pedestrian streets. And I certainly don’t have a set plan or route, my instructions for the day are just a sticky-note sized general directions (I don’t have a smart phone). This leads to getting lost a lot, but that’s fine. It’s not really lost though, as J.R. Tolkien said, “not all who wander are lost”. If I see something cool, I’ll go check it out. And then I see something else, so I go to that. And something else. And before you know it, I have no clue where I am anymore or how to get to where I was originally going, although I usually know the general direction.  This will make more sense if I actually tell you what I did, so without further ado, here’s what I did in montreal

Friday:

 Did a quick google search, made a plan for saturday, walked around, checked out the huge orange across the road.  Problem was that I was right by car central, 3 lanes of one-way traffic, then 4-lane highway in each direction, and another 3 lanes of one-way traffic. Not much for the walking interest. went for supper at a restaurant. The other co-op student went home (he lives in montreal), and the two supervisors were in a hotel downtown, so it was just me. It’s weird eating out by yourself, especially after ordering and waiting for your food. but plenty of opportunity for people watching – the father-son duo 2 tables down, dad in dress pants, collared shirt and nice shoes, son in faded and ripped jeans, flip flops, a normal t-shirt and checking his blackberry all the time, the middle-aged lady at the table beside me with heavy makeup complaining about the service, the family a couple tables down with a very energetic and outgoing mom making her two daughters laugh, the cute elderly couple with the man who holds his wife’s arm when he’s talking to her, and her looking at me every once in a while with a kind smile like I’m her grandson, the waitress’s surprised smile when I order a root beer, as the only logical explanation for a young 20-something unshaven male to eat out by himself is to drown his sorrows in beer. You are a bit more noticeable though, and people glance your way more often. Updated the blog that evening.

Saturday:

Took a taxi to biodome/Olympic stadium, walked through a rainforest, aquarium, south pole with penguins, and a northern Ontario section. Chuckled a bit in the northern Ontario, as I had spent a week there just 2 weeks ago, and was now separated by a barrier and paying to see it. Walked south, found a random fair/street garage sale. Arrived at Mount Royal, big park in front, some people throwing a Frisbee around, was walking towards them to ask if I could join, but they left. Another field on the other side of some trees, looked like high-school football game. Watched for a bit, one team was dominating. There was some sort of military plane circling overhead dropping what seemed to be skydivers. Walked back to the park to see if anyone was throwing a disc around, one guy playing with a soccer ball. Played with him for a bit, turned out he was waiting for some friends, and some other guys in the park joined, and we had about an hour of 6 on 6 soccer. I ended up playing in bare feet and pants, cause that’s all I had. After that finished, climbed up the mountain, found a chalet-thing at the top with a sweet view.

Walked around, found a sign for a cross, so went to that. Found a trail off to the side, went along that for a while, ended up at a parking lot. Wanted to go to the cemetery that I had seen on google maps previously, had no clue where I was. Asked an ice cream vendor, they said it was on the other side of the mountain. Darn. Walked back up the trail, walked past the cross, and all the way back to the chalet-thing (about 4km). found a map (hallelujah!) that told me where to go. Headed out towards the cross again, but turned down a different way. Found a cool park, and an area that the map said was a sculpture garden. Walked through the cemetery for a bit, but access to the larger half was closed.

Walked down to cemetery entrance into pretty rich residential area. Getting dark, feet and legs and knees and body hurt, and no restaurant in sight. Eventually found someone walking a dog, asked him, said nearest one was probably another 15min walk away. Lovely. Eventually made it, passing even more nice mansions. Had supper, asked them to call a taxi at the end. Made it home.

Sunday

Looked up bixi, a bike rental system, that seemed like a good idea. Found the nearest one (about 20min walk), then biked downtown. Had lunch, visited art museum that had a cool modern art exhibit, wandered around, tried to get to old montreal/notre dame area,

noticing roads getting less and less bike-friendly and more industrial, knew I had to go right, but roads to the right were all dead ends, and the river was right there. Saw a bridge up ahead, so continued on to get closer. Got a pic, turned around, found a bike station

that had at map (hallelujah!), got back downtown. Found a cathedral and participated in a catholic mass for a while, and just hung out in there for a bit. Decided time to head back, planned out a route, cool biking through downtown, found cool fountain place and random fog machines, turned

onto Victoria heading west (I didn’t register at the time that it was west, it was just ‘that way’, but for here I’ll say it was west), and suddenly it’s one-way going against me. Go south one street, turn right to go parallel. Runs into T intersection, don’t want right as that goes back to Victoria, so go south and take next right. It’s one-way, going the wrong way. Again. Go one more street down, it’s pretty residential, and eventually it takes a left (even further away from Victoria), and then left again, so I’m going backwards. I turn around and see a small footpath going west, so I go down it. It meanders a bit and comes up to a road also going west. Follow it for a bit, but it’s a dead end. Back track, head north and then west again, dead end. Notice signs saying ‘terrian prive’ (private property), so I try and get out of it. A couple dead ends later, and I’m back at the original T intersection I was at a while ago. Screw this, I’m going north to Victoria. Decide to see what’s one street north of Victoria, it’s also one-way, but in the right direction! Wonderful. What’s not so wonderful is that there’s a pretty huge hill facing me. Make it up to the top (here’s the view looking down as I was taking a break), go for one block, and there’s another bloody hill about as big as the

other one. Make it up that one as well on the big 3-speed bixi bike, and it seems to be flat for a while. Then it goes downhill for about 5 blocks, and no stop signs. Pure bliss J. Run into another bloody T intersection, and remembering what happened last time I turn towards victoria, which has turned back to 2-way. It’s pretty dark by now, and the people are probably wondering what a guy is doing on a bixi bike so far away from any station (I’m at the very edge of their service area). Finally make it to the outermost bike station, park it. Find a subway for supper, sit outside where there’s a bunch of Philippino guys playing chess. The last game to finish was a young teenager (probably 13-15ish) playing an older guy, and after they finished the older guy was saying all the things the younger guy did wrong (the old guy probably won), that his close game wasn’t good, that his style was very English, that he should work on having a plan. After the young guy left, the old guy was saying that he was very good, and that he could win an upcoming tournament. It was interesting to note how differently the old guy described the young guy once he was gone. Walked all the way home.

Monday

Decide to explore downtown/old montreal some more, as well as a science museum that I had found. Walk/bike to downtown through Victoria, too many stop signs on the downhill part. Very annoying. Wander around what I guess was old montreal with cobble stone streets. Random fighter

airplane does 2 flybys, very noisy and didn’t know what was going on the first time. Weird. Found another cathedral (there’s a lot of them), decided to visit that one. Very impressive, also had organ music going. And it was in there, with soulful organ music and amazing art and architecture, that I found myself...

Walk/bike down the port/waterfront area, go to the museum, find out they have an imax as well. Decide one on reefs would be pretty cool, but not till 4:30. Pretty cool museum, some stuff on FRP in bridges and how moment of inertia affects deflection, stuff I had learned pretty in-depth in school. One really cool thing on brain activity, where 2 people put some sort of headband on their head that measures something, and there’s a ball inbetween them, and somehow by thinking hard it would move the ball towards the other person, and the objective was to make the ball go to the other person’s side. Had no idea how it worked, but it looked pretty cool! Another cool thing was a table with a bunch of cubes, and by positioning them and turning them it made different beats/tunes, so you could make some pretty cool music with it. Here’s a pro playing one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgy1S8qymx0 Played around with that for a while. Eventually time for the imax, amazing variety of fish and coral and color. Really cool.

So that was my time in montreal. Probably my favourite thing about the city is the architecture – there’s no cookie-cutter subdivisions. Well, there probably are, but not that I saw. All the houses are stone and very different, some even looking like castles. And in the downtown area you’ll have steel-and-glass skyscrapers right beside old stone cathedrals.

Another cool thing is their taste in soccer – the soccer jersey count for the weekend was 2 AC Milan, 1 Chelsea, 1 Bayern Munich, 1 Real Madrid, 1 Valencia, 4 France, 1 Spain, 2 Brazil, and about 15 barcelona.

The plan after Montreal is to head south into the US, and stop at Binghampton, US, for the weekend.  Bye for now!