Day 31: Montreal

oh my goodness, I think we definitely covered a good chunk of Montreal today! Once again we woke to rain. Fortunately, the weatherman got it wrong today, sort of. We definitely got the called for thunderstorms overnight, but it mostly stopped raining by 7:30 or 8 this morning.

Our first stop of the day was St. Viatures bagel shop. Montreal angels are a thing and this place is the one to go to. It requires freeing Brown Car from the parking lot and venturing out for a little Canadian city driving. Small streets, lots of cars, all the street signs in French. But, thanks to trusty ol’google, we got along just fine. Though there was a little adventure in parking. The bagel place was a couple of miles away so traffic thinned in that area and it seemed that parking was more readily available. Haha, yeah, not so much. Pretty much every single parking space has it’s own set of rules. I’d like to be making that up, but i’m Not. It only took a couple of turns around the block to find a spot. We fed the meter plenty, good thing too as it seemed police were out in force enforcing parking this morning. Anyway, parked, we got bagels. The place is open 24/7. It’s a crazy assembly line of bagels going in and coming out of the oven and giant bins by the register of the offerings. Cash only, fortunately I had a few Canadian bucks on me and we were bagel bound. The “all-in” was my favorite - montreal’s Version of the everything bagel.

After bagels we drove to the nearby Jean-Talon farmer’s market. Every kind of fresh produce you can imagine, beautiful flowers, fresh herbs. Great market. I wanted to eat everything in site!

Next stop was Mont Royal. Since we had the car, there was no need to walk the 350 steps up. Very nice view of Montreal from the top. There is a cross in the park. The story goes that Cartier was so pleased with god when his new city didn’t flood that he carried a cross up the mountain to show his thanks to god. The originsl cross has been replaced. With a giant monstrosity of metal that lights up. Anyhow...

We then cruised over to the little lake onMont Royal. That’s when we got rained on. Short shower though. And it actually did some good, it was horribly humid prior to the rain shower. The clouds were the only thing keeping it bearable. After the rain, the clouds and humidity blew off and it was a nice, though a bit warm, afternoon.

One more stop with Brown Car was the St. Joseph Oratory. It’s a bit late for me to figure out the proper French spelling. Ot’s A massive cathedral on a big hill. Everything about it seemed imposing. Most Catholic Churches are beautiful and grand and full of gold. This one was hard and big and it felt more like the church was trying it’s mightiest to instill the fear of god in all who entered. The organ is among the 10 most famous organs in the world. It was also huge and imposing. And incredibly cool to see.

We took Brown Car back to the hotel and trekked on down to the old port. Smoked meat sandwiches are a thing, so we had to give it a go. The meat was great, sandwich could have used a bit less mustard though.

Next we toured the Notre Dame Basilica.  This is exactly the thing you think of when you think of a massive cathedral. Beautiful, peaceful, serene, even in light of the very many tourists that were present. In short, the opposite of St. Joseph’s. The massive organ, bigger than St. Joseph’s by 1200 pipes, was beautiful too.

Next it was onto the museum on the point down by the water. Again, the proper French name isn’t happening tonight. Very cool museum about the history of Montreal, with focus on the archeological sites there. In fact, most of the museum is under ground as you walk over the ruins of the old city. You actually emerge from the museum in another building on the other side of the street.

We cooled our jets for awhile walking around the old port and eventually wound our way back up to the Rue Jacques Cartier for dinner. Same place as last night. That was not our intent, but a lot of the restaurants in that area were either too upscale or not very good. Hardin Nelson has great food, nice outdoor seating, and isn’t too much for tired tourists at the end of a long day. About a mile walk back to the hotel and we are calling it a night.

We’ve been gone over a month now.