The day started with blue skies and surprisingly warm t-shirt and shorts weather. We decided to go back to one of the stops we saw on the bus, one of local markets – Bonsecours Markets. It was by the riverside, and the walk there through Old Montreal was nice if you like old buildings.

Near there markets there was a Ferris Wheel – so of course being tourists we had to give the wheel a go (after a good coffee of course). Looks like it’s normally sitting on the water – but today the water was nowhere to found, just the shallow bottom of the …lake? Moat? Like any good Ferris wheel it had its ups and downs (sorry!). Of course it also lead to a lot of pictures of town.

We took a closer look at the adventure playground ship – looks like lots of fun…for young people!

The market is a big building, yet felt strangely small inside. It was bit odd – part of it was taken over for some conference so among the shops was a registration desk, and depending on which way you turned there were either shops, or conferences in progress. But we did find the shops and had a walk through. For a very touristy place I guess it’s unsurprising that it was nearly all souvenir shops, but that’s all good – bought some souvenirs!

The moment we left the market building, the rain started pouring down – but as luck would have it, right nearby was a burger joint, which due to the fact it had a roof, suddenly became a really god place to stop for a while. As a bonus, it also had really nice burgers.

Happily the rain didn’t hang around too long, so we talk a walk down a long ,beautiful;, shop-filled street in Old Montreal. There was great variety in the shops here – for every souvenir shop there was an accompanying crepe shop … I mean, what more does one really need?

Later in the afternoon we sought out to discover the mythical (not really) underground city of Montreal. Just the thing for the winter months, apparently there about 20km of underground interconnect offices and corridors and cinemas and show and art galleries and plenty more besides. We headed for the nearest ‘RESO’ door – and sure enough, were weren’t quite underground but we were managing to be inside and outside at the same time.

We took a bit of a walk, and sure enough we travelled underground, found a few tunnels. But all too quickly we found ourselves back at street level again, so I think it’s not quite the 20km of ‘underground’ that people claim — it’s more like underground connections between buildings, but I’m sure it’s still handy to get around then it’s below zero degrees above.

We took one more try at it, from Complexe Desjardins – a bit of a mall, a bit of a tunnel…but we found ourselves up at street level again so just wandered a bit along Montreal’s main street – Rue St Catherine, and then over to the IGA. The weather report said to expect thunderstorms and more rain so rather than go out to dinner we just got some stuff to eat at home.

Aaaand… that’s about it, that was the day, nice to see some new (to us at least) bits of Montreal – it has a mix of old and new a bit like Boston, but unlike Boston the lines are more clearly drawn between new and old.

As I’m writing this, a weather alert just popped up on my screen for squalls and severe thunderstorms, so staying in has been a smart choice!