The Grand Canadian/
American Adventure
Day 15 Montreal
Our last day, we started the day late, ever notice the
further in to a trip the more tired you become?
To avoid the traffic we got directions to the subway and
caught that into the city centre, this pleased Ryan, as up until now he hasn’t
had a subway ride in North America. Getting out of the station we found
ourselves right near the Montreal Cathedral, another impressive Catholic
church. This one however has to be the most impressive so far.
One thing we noticed almost immediately in Montreal was the
number of homeless people on the streets, more so than any other city we have
come across, it’s very sad. Not sure if this has to do with Montreal’s status
as Canada’s second city. Back in the nineteen seventies around the time of the
Olympic Games Montreal was the financial centre of Canada, but an anecdote I
overheard from a local was that that changed when there was talk of Quebec
seceding from the rest of Canada, this sent jitters through the financial
community and a lot of them upped sticks and moved to Toronto, this in
conjunction with the Olympics left the city with a lot of debt, which I think
they are only just coming out from under. Even though Montreal is in French
Quebec we noticed English being spoken far more than French. The first thing
people say to you when you approach them is “Bonjour Hi” and then they usually
lapse into English. This may have a lot to do with the proximity of the city to
Ontario and the US border.
After the Cathedral we then jumped on a bus and did a two
hour hop on hop off tour of the city, once again a great way of fitting in as
much as possible and better than walking as the temperature has started to rise
the further West we have gone. Among the highlights was seeing people surf on
the St Lawrence River!! Yes there are a small group of rapids that the diehards
actually try and surf. Something we didn’t realise at first is that Montreal is
actually situated on a 50 kilometre long island in the middle of the St
Lawrence river Montreal and even though it isn’t as old as Quebec City it still
has a great deal of history associated with it and a large number of historic
buildings. It also boasts the second largest French University outside of
France. Again on the trip we came across another church, the Oratory of St
Joseph and we got off at Mont Calm the mountain/hill in the middle of the city
with its great views. Back on the bus we headed back to the subway and the
hotel, not before time too, as we had one little girl who was to suffer a bad
case of heat stroke later that night , so bad in fact we were on the verge of
getting her to hospital. Thankfully she perked up a bit the next day when we
left.
Day 15 is where I will leave this trip, because Tash was
still not well we didn’t dally on the final day and pushed straight through
back to Burlington.
As I sit here now it is Wednesday morning and we are doing
our final packing before flying out later today for Colorado and beginning the
second phase of the holidays. Be assured there are plenty more adventures and
blogs to come.
