Bonjour from Montreal!
I woke up this morning before 6am with a start and had to check my messages. I realized with dread that I'd missed the opportunity to meet up with a friend from old Portage la Prairie times. I think I had it in my head that I'd see her between Montreal and Quebec City, (she's french!) when it was actually along the route from Ottawa to Montreal. We were now well over two hours away from her. I messaged with my sad news and she admitted she thought about messaging when she saw we were back in Kanata and leaving for Montreal, but didn't want to add any pressure. Je suis désolé, Lynne!!! And we will miss not meeting your goats too! :(
Since I was already awake, I loaded up a couple loads of laundry and walked down to the laundromat on site and had a shower in the lovely shower block. Very nicely set up showers here! my fav so far - campground-wise. Back to the rig to make a coffee and try to plan a route for the day with my maps and booklets! I wish getting up this early before everyone was a regular thing! It's sure a nice time, haha.
After breakfast, and some plans made, we had a quick swim before calling a taxi for pick up. It's so humid and hot here, we've had the AC running, and we very much appreciate the pool!
Got a local La Prairie taxi to come pick us up. We played mini golf while we waited for it. It was a sedan and the driver made Jonathan sit in the back seat with me and the kids. It also smelled terribly of smoke. It was $50 for a 35-40min ride to Longeuil Station... the closest terminal for us to catch the Metro into the city. We bought two 2-day weekend passes for Jonathan and I ($14 each), and the kids were free. On weekends a handful of the main tourist area stations are free for all, but we had to get into that area from Longeuil anyhow and had other areas in mind to search for St-Viateur and Fairmont Bagels! We caught the yellow line in to Berri-Uqam Station which was the main hub for the orange and green line to Vieux Montreal.
Having arrived in Vieux Quebec… with map in hand, we wandered down towards Ville-Marie and had a look at Basilica de Notre Dame. As beautiful as it is inside, we opted to admire from the outside only. Lots of souvenir shops around here and we ducked into Bastix Souvenirs near Notre Dame to buy some postcards and a Montreal sticker for the rig. Ollie chose a Star Wars themed Montreal sticker - very fun. I recognized Bastix as a customer of Canadian Duty Free Group - the company I started working for over 20 years ago. Kind of fun to see it in person!
We were pretty hungry right off the hop and had hopes of finding poutine quickly. As it played out, we walked further down the street and found a really nice little terrace/patio with a couple tables free. It was hot out and this looked very appealing. No poutine here at the Mexican restaurant, but some yummy cauliflower tacos and kid quesadillas were ordered, along with refreshing drinks. Amelia’s pineapple juice attracted some bees and wasps and the kids were entertained rescuing and feeding the bees. Oliver is some kind of bee whisperer and likes them wandering over his hand.
After filling up on food, we were ready to explore the Vieux Port and walked down towards the water’s edge. We saw where the Musée de Science was and Ollie was very interested to check it out. We put that on our possible “to-do” list for tomorrow. Further down the docks we saw some interesting market stalls with all sorts of jewellery, henna art, toys, etc. At the end of this stretch we came to the Voile et Voile ropes course … a huge ropes course (helmet and harness/ropes required) in the configuration of a massive pirate ship. It looked super cool, but also quite hard (compared to the one we did in Squamish) and it was such a hot and humid day, we could not even think about doing it this afternoon. Amelia was super keen on the ropes course, so we pocketed that as a possible activity tomorrow.
We walked back up away from the water and into Old Québec again and wandered through the very dense garden of the Maison de __________ (name escapes me and I have to look it up) and over to a fun street that had more restaurants and some awesome street musicians playing lively and engaging music. We stopped in the shade to enjoy the music, and Ollie and Amelia ran over after and gave them a tip.
NOTE: My sträva I did for the day shows our route (10km+), and as I type this out based on my very scratchy notes from the day, I realize I’m forgetting details. The days in the cities are so busy, I’m tired at the end of the day!)
Walked up Ville-Marie again away from the ports to Sainte-Catherine - a long street with tons of shops and restaurants on it. Near here we found a really fun fountain that people were wading in and cooling down. We were also hot and the kiddos had tired little feet. Kids and I went in and waded around to cool off. Oliver spent a fair bit of time trying to splash his sister, or stopping some of the fountain sprays and inadvertently getting other people wet.
Sufficiently cooled, we kept walked along Sainte-Catherine in search of gelato. We found a lovely place called Havre Aux Glacé to get sorbet and coffee near Place des Arts. (We have been very good at using as much French as possible when out and about!) We ordered just in time! After we went outside the tiny shop to sit down by some planters, we noticed the line up got quite long. Jonathan also noted that one of the girls working in the shop dashed outside and gave a small cup of gelato to a person who appeared to be homeless. There did seem to be a much kinder vibe towards homeless people here.
Sat outside on the benches, Oliver had another bee experience as one landed on his hand and was very curious about the sorbet on his sticky fingers. He never panics when bees are near, and let it crawl around on his hand for awhile… but it was kinda worrisome when it started wiggling around as if it wanted to sting. He managed to get it onto a flower in the planter behind us, at which point we noticed the man sitting next to us (the bench was a circle around the planter) had a look of disbelief and relief on his face when the bee was off Ollie’s hand. He said he’s never seen someone so calm around bees and that he had been holding his breath the whole time in sheer panic!
He introduced himself as Marc. He said, “excuse me, but I noticed your map… are you visiting?”. He works for the Federal government and had lots of info about the city for us and answered questions about the places we wanted to check out. He was super chatty and happy to offer his advice and gave us his WhatsApp contact info should we have any other questions. (In hindsight, we overlooked some of his advice about one end of the green line metro being a bit dodgy and not worth exploring… more later)
We carried on our walk and came across another cool looking old church that had a “beach” in front of it! Basically a large area filled with sand, and about 8 or so permanent fabric “beach chairs” with canopies above them positioned around the sand. Montreal has lots of cool little rest areas like this, with benches, chairs, artsy seats, etc. It was here that Amelia and I saw this very sweet, tiny little florist shop covered with shelves of succulents and cactus. They were so cute, we felt compelled to buy one. When Ollie came over, we chose a cute teeny cactus to buy, and Oliver named him Jerry.
Kids and I sat down in one of the double beach chairs for a rest while waiting for Jonathan who was wandering a bit.
Further along we saw a window for a downstairs Comic store and Ollie wanted to check it out. The owner inside was a big, middle aged man with lots of jokes and banter with his other employee. Ollie enjoyed looking at all the comics and memorabilia. On the way out, the store owner called him over and asked him if he wanted some free stuff. He went to a box and collected a stack of comic magazines for him and handed it to him. Delighted, Ollie had a big smile and huge thank you’s as we walked back out up the stairs. Such a nice experience!
We kept on walking in hopes of finding the Bell Centre Arena, but there was some confusion from our map because Jonathan had marked the Forum on the map, which was sort of close to the Bell Centre. Google gave us some directions but they didn’t quite jive with the paper map. Long story short, we ended up missing the turn for the Bell Centre, and kept walking along until we found the old Forum. This had been painted all black and was now a movie theatre. It was closed and the area around it was pretty sketch. We were tired and decided to hop on the Metro back to Berri Uqam and head for home. The station at Atwater was super dodgy with a few people hanging around the park area outside. We scooted the kids into the station and onto the train and got back to Berri Station safe and sound. Calling it a day, we took the yellow line back to Longeuil terminus and called an Uber to come get us. $42 later (!!) we were back at the KOA Montreal South for a swim and ravioli. I did more laundry, and we went to bed very tired after a hot and busy day in the city. Our kiddos did so well! So much walking!
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