It’s our last day in Montreal, so we thought we’d venture a little bit out of the city. Not too far though, just to the botanic gardens. Or rather, the Jardin botanique. In the province of Quebec, everything is French first. In the news today a local bus company found themselves in trouble when promoting the local hockey team, as the bus says “Go Canadiens” – using that terrible awful no good English word, “Go”. It was hastily switched to “Allez Canadiens” and all was right with the world. You can kind of understand where they’re coming from though, when the majority of the country speaks English it would be far too easy for English words to keep creeping in until they took over completely, and the Quebecois are very proud of their French heritage and of course want to keep it that way. I guess that’s why it’s always polite to start every visit to a shop or restaurant etc with Bonjour, even if in our case it’s just about the only French word you know.

This morning it was about 5 degrees, the ‘feel like’ temperature was -3 on account of the wind. However by the time we headed out it wasn’t too bad at all with a jacket on. At this time we were again grateful that the bus driver from the airport didn’t let us use our transport card – they are active for 24 hours after first use and they hadn’t had their first use yet, so when we caught the train today, the 24 hours transport card worked a treat. (And because I’m a nerd, and future me will probably wonder what train we caught, we took Orange line from “Square Victoria – OCAI” to “Berri-UQAM” then changed to the green line, to “Pie IX” station. Which (because I am classy) sounded like “Penif” in every announcement. It’s Pie Neuf (Neuf being 9 in French of course). Anyway. It seems the Montreal Metro is modelled off the Paris Metro, as all the trains have rubber tyres (in addition to running on rails). I guess does make a bit quieter and the ride is a bit more comfortable, but yeah it sure is different. All the trains and station we saw were very clean and well maintained, no graffiti to be seen. Anyway, this means time for train/station photos..

The botanic gardens are right near the Olympic stadium, both just a few minutes walk from PIE IX station.

Ordinarily, it costs about $20 to get in tot he botanic gardens, but happily (well, for reasons soon to be clear) entry is currently free, so in we wandered. Around the side, not through the main building where the greenhouses are, most of which still seemed to be closed for maintenance. But to cut a long story short I am pretty sure the main reason it was free, is because Montreal is just coming out of winter, so most of the place just looked this:

Most of the garden was looking pretty bare, with some trees just starting to get their leaves, and some flowers starting to think about budding, but for the most part is a bleak affair. Must look extra spooky in the evening! But we did find some signs of life, unsurprisingly the ‘Arctic Garden’ had plenty of life on offer. There were also a few trees showing off their beautiful blossoms. And we found a (tiny) squirrel!

So, that was about it for the gardens – I’m sure they look just stunning when everything’s in flower, but currently things are a little bleak. Man you’d kinda be annoyed if you’d paid $20! 🙂

After that, back to Penif station. You can tell, just a bit, that the station was built in 1976 when Montreal hosted the olympics. Good old brutalist concrete abounds!

One nifty thing about the trains – there were lights around the doors, and just before the train pulled in to the station, the doors would light up green on the side that they were gonna open for that station. Nice!

After that we headed back and into the local part of the ‘underground city’/ RESO, and found somewhere for lunch. Also, they had a chunk of the Berlin Wall in there, because…reasons.

One thing about being in a new city is that there can be a bit of a cognitive load on working out where to go, where to eat, etc, etc — so tonight to keep it simple we just went back to the delicious Ramen place. Sure enough it did not disappoint, more delicious noodle-y goodness, and delicious home-made lemonade.

After that, it was time to pack the suitcases up again and be ready for our next bit of the journey. At least this time there’s no 4AM wake-up. Montreal has been a nice place, there’s pretty much nothing to worry about re the language barrier, just start with ‘Bonjour, good morning’ and everyone gets the hint very quickly that you don’t know a word of French 🙂 Old Montreal is very pretty, New Montreal ain’t so bad either. I think four days was the right amount of time to be a tourist here. My traveller’s trip? Maybe come in May/June if you can when the garden is in full bloom, and the city itself blooms as well, as I think the whole place will become a bit more alive for Spring.

Tomorrow, time to head for another city. Allons-y !