Montreal, Quebec,
Canada
June 22nd
– June 26th 2013
We were able to leave the house at 12.27 pm (J. slept
few hours after the night shift). Saturday, June 22nd.
She was some what cranky, but we made it out ok. Heading north on
I-81, nothing special as we drove on this road few times before. We
made a small detour and saw a road side waterfall, actually pretty
nice one. And more freeway, we stopped by NY welcome center and got
some stuff about 1000 islands area. Cross the toll bridge and river
and seeing many islands and forest. Cross the border to Canada, easy
and quick. Freeway 401, I believe, boring, nothing … just road.
Rain and clouds, great start of the trip. Less than an hour before
Montreal we stopped for a gas, had some issues with the pump and
credit card, no English option. Welcome to Quebec. The city and not
much to see from freeway, relatively easy to find the hotel in Latin
Quarter. Check in, about 5.14 pm, park the car in the parking
structure (still hoping it will be just those 12 dollars per day). A
bit rainy, but we left for the walk to Old Montreal. Some boring
streets, some homeless people, traffic … normal city. We found a
visitor's center and got some more stuff from there. Old port, some
big ass yachts and still drizzling. It looked like Europe, old
cities. Many and many restaurants and tourist shops. Even with the
weather it was really nice. So far, Montreal is nice, short of
language (so far everybody spoke English as well).
Decent night in Montreal. We walked to the downtown
(about 2.5 kilometers), it was Sunday morning, June 23rd.
There was some festival on the street, so we were watching people
cleaning up. The city waking up. The information center, we wanted to
buy “Museum Pass” (80 dollars per person), unfortunately they did
not sell it. Some more information. We walked around for a bit and by
ten o'clock we were walking into the Art Museum.
http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/ We
got our passes and went through the museum. It was pretty extensive
and quite interesting. There were some less interesting parts, but
overall it was good. Three buildings, some art outside and special
exhibition of glass art.
http://www.stm.info/english/metro/a-index.htm
After that, we took Metro for two station to Museum of Contemporary
Art. http://www.macm.org/en/
J. wanted to see this more than the Fine Arts Museum, but we were
both kind of disappointed, there were some interesting installations,
but generally it was just too weird. Short film of a guy sawing off
the street light pole. “Art.” Part of the Museum Pass was three
day public transport ticket. As our hotel was close to the main
transfer Metro station “Beri”, we went to the hotel for a
sandwich (lunch).
It was hot and
humid, we were as well kind of tired of walking, but we went to the
Metro and took a short yellow line to the island in the river. Small
walk to the Biosphere (round structure built in 1967 for Montreal
Expo) – museum. http://www.ec.gc.ca/biosphere/
We walked through few exhibit halls, one of them was describing never
ending human appetite for more and bigger things. And that have
consequences – trash, destruction of environment etc. We were told
as well about the nature walk, few times, so we decided to do it.
Another hall was showing “futuristic” dresses made from really
strange things (bullet shells, fish skin, plastic). A short movie
about the stuff people use in perfumes, hair sprays and lipsticks.
Strange and scary. The walk – quite a few people and a biologist
(girl) on pixie sticks. It was really interesting. We saw snapping
turtle and a groundhog. As well bunch of other information. We were
glad we went. Back in the museum, upper levels about alternative
energy and stuff like that, really nice view of Montreal. Back to
Metro, a ride to Beri and change to train. We found in a guide
“Little Italy”, walked around, few restaurants and stores,
otherwise pretty sad. And strange. Got some food in the store and
went back to the hotel. Really sticky and tired. Montreal is nice
city.
Monday, June
24th, apparently National Day of
Quebec.
http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/canada/st-jean-baptiste-day
For this day we planned to visit many attractions in Olympic Park.
http://parcolympique.qc.ca/en/
Healthy breakfast at the hotel and walk to the metro. A ride on a
green line and walk to the botanical garden with Mosaiculture
(statues and other art made from plants).
http://espacepourlavie.ca/en/botanical-garden
It opened at 9.00 am and we were there just few minutes after. It was
already hot and humid. The entrance to the garden was pretty
impressive. For the most part, it is impossible to describe what we
seen, it was really hard to take a pictures of those plant statues as
well. The garden was nice by itself, but the show of Mosaiculture
made it incredible. It started with some smaller statues of lemurs,
people and dog from Tokio train station. It was amazing how those
structures were created, all the plants growing on them. Even it was
holiday, there were not too many people yet. Blooming roses, water
features and unbelievable statues made from plants. And they were
getting bigger and more creative. Who knew.
Even our schedule
was tight, we took a walk through the arboretum to the tree house. It
was really hot, otherwise the garden was lovely and peaceful. A small
pond by the tree house (actually really sizable house), some
educational materials, outdoor display of bonsai (one was a willow
tree on the table with the water). Exhibition of carved books from
wood, it was pretty great. A walk back to the main area of the
garden.
Warmer and warmer.
As well more people. We continued our tour around the garden seeing
the statues.
We were surprised several times by the size and
complexity of them. It was incredible what those people created and
how the flowers were planted on those statues. Again, it is
impossible to describe and even pictures do not do good job.
The botanical
garden and other attraction were within Olympic Park close to
downtown Montreal. It was a place of 1976 Olympics (I think). Done
with the exhibition of Mosaiculture and the gardens itself (as the
statues were placed within the gardens ground), we walked into the
greenhouses. It was several interconnected structures with different
themes (tropical, desert etc.). Hot and humid. We met two people on
the way out. Very well done and incredible. One of the best botanical
gardens we have ever seen. Outside again, we walked through Alpine
garden (where we saw small fox just eating grass and not afraid of
people), saw Chinese garden with more bonsai (they have different
name for it) and Japanese garden. There were more bonsai, nice
building with some paper exhibit and tea garden (not open to walk
in). We got into Insectarium
http://espacepourlavie.ca/en/insectarium,
it was included in our Museum Pass and it was next to (more less
within) the garden. Relatively small place with some live insect and
thousands and thousands different creatures on display. It was
unbelievable to see what shares this planet with us. Out by about
2.02 pm.
Still within the
park http://parcolympique.qc.ca/en/,
there was Biodome http://espacepourlavie.ca/biodome,
a structure with several displays of different biospheres. Tropical,
Canadian etc, it was crowded, relatively small, still interesting,
but could not rival the botanical garden. I wanted to see a beaver,
but it looked like they had their babies, so they were hiding. Some
monkeys and birds in tropical section, penguins (being fed), bunch of
fish and birds, ducks … pretty well done. We saw a duck diving
pretty deep, interesting. We wanted to go to some show in the
Planetarium (next door to Biodome), but the one in English was pretty
late and there was not much to see in there. It was so hot outside.
Looking at other options, waiting and feeling run down from the heat
and humidity.
With the Pass, we
got the discount for the Tower
http://parcolympique.qc.ca/en/the-park/the-montreal-tower/,
it was one ticket for two people (still it was 22.50 dollars). J. was
not extremely excited about it, but I wanted to go up and see it. Up
in the cabin, like a train ride. Even it was kind of foggy in the
distance, we still got pretty impressive views of the city. It was
worth it (in my opinion). We sit down for a moment, enjoy the views
and life. It was great. It was relatively early, but we were tired,
so we took a Metro to our hotel to eat something and took a short
break. It was nice, air conditioned and relaxing. And from middle of
nowhere, there was pretty bad storm going on. We looked from the
windows and could not believe what we saw, really dark and heavy
rain. Good night.
Tuesday,
June 25th 2013.
Time to leave the city. We were up at 8.00 am, had some breakfast and
coffee (included in our hotel price) and decided to take a walk in
the neighborhood. Already getting warm and humid. We walked through
the Gay Village (the main street is pedestrian only during summer and
has pink balls in the air on strings (for bunch of blocks). Really
nice area, we followed a route from the guide book. We started the
walk from our hotel, it was close enough. Saint Catherine (the main
street with the pink balls) was normal city streets with restaurants
and shops. The side streets we saw were mostly quiet and pretty nice,
you would not believe that you were maybe twenty minutes from
downtown Montreal (the city of 1.8 million people). We combined two
walks and continued in different area, big park with two ponds, many
people biking. There is as well great public transport system. We
stopped by a small bakery and got a roll and two sweet treats. Much
warmer. We took metro back to the hotel. I had a breakfast and we
left.
We left the garage where the car was parked (it was 33 dollars for
the whole time), not too bad. We took a drive through the city
(hospitals, university, along the Mount Royal Park). We were heading
to the mountain park – Mount Royal. A bit confusing parking and
almost no coins, we walked to the vista point and got some great
views of the city, still the fog in the distance. And hot. And humid.
There was as well some big castle like structure. One more vista
point, not much different. Montreal is really nice. After seeing the
Mount Royal Park we got back on the road and head to the freeway. We
made it and were leaving the city. It was pretty great trip. Very
like European city. Very friendly, well established, with many nice
areas, great public transit. We would come back.
Driving to Burlington, Vermont via the islands in the lake Champlain.
We left freeway and were heading to Vermont on some small roads,
mostly farms and few small villages. Not super exciting. Nothing
special. Crossing the border. Tiny border station. Vermont welcome
center, cup of coffee and few maps. The guy told us about bad weather
coming in. Vermont was pretty much the same as Quebec. The drive was
scenic, otherwise there was not much to do. It started to rain.
Pretty heavy rain. We escaped the rain and stopped by some antique
shop. While inside, it started to rain like hell, on the way to car,
J. slipped on the grass and fell. For quiet a while we had to drive
around 15 miles an hour, because it was raining so hard, we could not
see the road. Scary. Really something to enjoy. We made it, we left
the islands and were heading to Burlington, Vermont.
Driving
and driving. We stopped by Costco store in Burlington and did some
grocery shopping (there is no store in New York state close to us).
Again raining like the hell. City of Burlington, it took us a while
to get it, few flooded roads, probably two to three inches. Not much
to the city, kind of boring. We parked by the lake and looked around,
it started to rain again. Later we found out that the city has about
40000 inhabitants (tiny city). Because of the rain, we just drove
around the downtown (not much to it) and via university parts we were
leaving the city. About half an hour on the freeway towards the
state's capitol Montpelier. Really hilly and green, no rain at that
moment. The city of Montpelier, we kind of could not believe what we
saw. It was a tiny cute town. As we learned later, it is the smallest
capitol city in the US and has about 9000 inhabitants. We drove
around a small downtown, saw a capitol building and a bit of town. We
drove to Barre for the night, more less part of the “metropolitan”
Montpelier area. Again, not much there. More rain.
We woke up by the trash pick up noise at 4.32 am, it was awful. In
the morning we had some breakfast and left the place around 9.03 am.
Surprisingly, it was raining. We were going to cross the mountains, I
guess, and were heading to NY somewhere in the area of Lake George.
Raining and really foggy, we could not see much further than maybe 40
yards from the road, nice sightseeing drive. We took a wrong turn and
made 14 miles detour (had to drive back). Some skiing resorts, wild
river and nice country (did not see too far due to the rain). Few
stops, gas … basically just driving … and enjoying the weather.
Pretty much the same in New York state. The rain stopped. At the end
on I-90 Thruway. Back in Syracuse at 4.37 pm. Hot, humid, tired.
Montreal was great, the rest a bit less.
