We started the day with no solid plans to do anything particular – which can be nice when on holidays. We stopped off for breakfast at Tim Hortons, and couldn’t help but notice their hockey-stick door handles, a nice touch.

We passed by a store called Bulk Mart – from the outside it looked a bit like a typical bargain/discout shop, but once inside, I was very, very mistaken. It was amazing – it was all self-service food stuff, you name it they probably had it. I was blown away, it was so cool!

So yeah, really cool shop – and no packaging as such, however they do offer plastic bags everywhere to bag your goods. I guess it still works out as much more environmentally sound than rigid plastic packaging though, and you only buy as much as you need. Anyway, though that was really cool.

As we wandered on I saw this sign, which I also thought was cool.

Quickly followed by this fancy larger-than-life shopfront for a Bar & Grill.

One of the destinations we were heading for was ‘Rush Alley’ also known as “Graffiti Alley’ – a Toronto equivalent of Hosier Lane in Melbourne, kinda. Some of the art was nice, some of it wasn’t, I guess art is all subjective like that, so you be the judge…

As we continued out walk along, I think the universe conspired to bring a little extra joy into my day – there was a record shop selling old records for 50c each, and right in front of it, a promotional truck giving away free chocolate! I mean life doesn’t get better, right? I happily took the free chocolate, and also bought a few old vinyl records that may or may not survive the trip home.

As we passed by this sticker, we made sure to remain compliant:

We made sure there was absolutely no fun as we approached city hall and the big Toronto sign.

Old city hall:

Continuing on down York Street, it was nice to see the gardens in full bloom.

There’s no show to see tonight, but we did pop in to the TIFF to see a movie, “A Nice Indian Boy”. TIFF stands for ‘Toronto International Film Festival’ but it’s also a foundation, and a building with a few cinemas. The movie itself was a very cute rom-com with all the usual ups and downs and (spoiler alert) a happy ending. Lovely!

Dinner was a quick burger at South Burger, alongside tasty fries and poutine.

Tomorrow, it’s time to move on. We’re up at oh-god-not-again o’clock for an early flight, so that’s about it for Toronto. It was great to be back, this city has good vibes and plenty of energy, plenty to see and do, so much more to it than just the CN Tower. A beautiful harbour, many interesting neighbourhoods, it has a Bulk Barn … If you get the chance, go visit Toronto!

This morning, we headed down to Toronto Harbour to take a boat cruise around the harbour and its nearby islands. On the way I saw a cool reflection of the CN tower in a nearby building.

Like all good things in life it was a case of “But first … coffee”. So I was grateful we spotted place called Aroma Espresso Bar on the way. It was much more than a coffee joint, doing delicious cooked breakfasts as well. So, we tried their take on Smashed Avo.

Smash Avo, with egg, and almond flakes, and an egg, and ‘fries’ – not French fries, but little chunks of fried potato. Brekky was great, coffee was good (8/10 on the iScott Coffee Scale), and then we were all set for the boat tour.

There was, of course, also another opportunity to get yet another photo of the CN Tower. It really does dominate this place.

While we were waiting, saw this amusing sign in a shop.

After a short wait it was time for the tour – I guess they didn’t have too many people booked for this one as we set off in a little boat usually used as a water taxi – I think it seated about 20, but we didn’t have that many on board. But that doesn’t matter, it floats, it moves, it did everything that it needed to do, and we had a good tour with an interesting commentary. We were also lucky that we had another day of excellent weather – it reached about 21 degrees during the day but it felt warmer. Anyway, time for photos!

Around the small islands, there were tons of cormorants, everywhere. Apparently they are an invasive pest, with poo so toxic it’s actually killing all the trees as it all get absorbed into the soil. They say they’re taking measures to reduce their numbers … but judging my the number of them around it’s not exactly working.

One of the islands also has a small airport on it – one of the planes flew pretty much right over our heads as it came in the land, we also saw another one a further away. As we were coming back in toward the end of the cruise.

After the tour we went for a bit of a walk, and there was this ‘interesting’ bit of town street where you had to stand in the exact right spot while you were waiting:

If you were standing in the narrow dark grey strip toward the right, you were safe. Otherwise, you’re going to be whacked by a tram running on the left, or struck down by a truck on the road to the right. Still, we managed to wait for the lights to change without getting squished, but the tram sure did feel very close as it whizzed by.

Right near the CN tower, there’s a train museum. I didn’t go in, but I did get some photos from the outside, where the ‘roundabout’ they used to use to get trains into all their sheds is still in place since the 1920s.

And here’s the real non-museum train line with some odd-looking double-decker carriages.

We went back to our room, and next minute, BEEP! BEEP! AWOOGA! AWOOGA! Both our phones and my watch all started blaring out a loud siren noise as this turned up on the screen.

Gotta say the test sure was successful – not quite as alarming as a 4am fire alarm or whatever, but sure couldn’t be missed! So yeah, successful test, I guess!

For the afternoon, we decided to re-visit an all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurant that was bloody marvellous back in 2018. It was a little bit out of the way, and my phone said the best way was to take the subway. It also showed that not far away, was an IKEA. We were ahead of schedule, so IKEA first, dinner second. Easy!

The IKEA was a baby one, and really warm inside too. I think Toronto probably excels at keeping everyone warm when it’s -10 outside, but it gets to 21 and nobody knows how to spell Air Conditioning 😀 Still, we had a quick wander around the mini=IKEA. Sure enough, what can I say, it’s an IKEA, prices seemed pretty comparable to Australia.

This however was nice to see – never noticed an equivalent at an IKEA back home.

Dinner was just a short walk away, to Spring Sushi. It’s all All You Can Eat and so, having skipped lunch, it was a case of Challenge Accepted! It was just as good as we remembering it from last time. They sit and iPad on your table and you just keep ordering stuff. (But don’t overdo it else you will be charged extra for uneaten food, and rightly so).

Perhaps more important was the number of items ordered.

Don’t worry, most of these dishes were tiny, like two little Takoyaki balls. Understandably after all that, we weren’t hungry any more…but not to the point of overdoing it and feeling ill, we stopped in time 🙂

Just across the road was a huge shopping centre we took a brief wander through, probably lucky to cover even a quarter of it, but it did have an Apple Shop so of course had to get a picture. Because Nerd.

We went back to our room, and I was glad to have a chat with my Dad over FaceTime.

I then waited for the sun to set – around 8:30pm. Nice to see the city at night, and the CN tower as it lights up in Red and Blue.

That’s about it for today. The holiday is slowly approaching its end, but not yet! Let’s do it again tomorrow.

Good news everyone – Toronto has a cat cafe! So yes we dropped in for a visit. The walk up there was nice, saw some more local sights as we walked around. Toronto has some good quality street art around the place, reminds me a bit of home.

The cat cafe was small but functional – plenty of spaces for the cats to hide when they didn’t want to be around humans, and they all looked happy and healthy. (Well, there’s one that doesn’t look happy, but that’s the kind of cat).

After that we popped in to the shops, and Starbucks really go a bit crazy over here. A 1.4 litre bottle of cold Starbucks? Sure thing, here you go!

It was also interesting to see this notice, a sign of the times…

Lunch was at a kebab place – or rather, German Doner Kebab place. Not the kind of kebab we’re used to, but delicious all the same.

Next up, we caught a tram over to the Museum Of Illusion. Easy-peasy to catch since you can just use your phone or credit card to tap on.

The Museum of Illusion, well, it might have been more fun for kids, or people who have never seen an optical illusion on the internet, but it was a something to do for a little while. It was a collection of rooms and little exhibits with optical illusions, an ‘upside-down room’ , kaleidoscope mirrors, and the like.

We next wandered into St Lawrence Market

It took me a while before I remembered when we last visited – it was as part of a tour so we’d only had a short time to look around and grab a sandwich. So it was nice this time to be able to have a proper wander – it reminded me a bit of the awesome markets in the middle of Adelaide. There was an amazing amount of delicious things, quality produce, and of course the occasional souvenir shop. The cake shop looked just too good to ignore so one lemon meringue tart and a ‘peach cookie’ (more like a cake) made its way back to our room.

For dinner, we walked up to the entertainment/restaurant precinct of King Street West, to have dinner at place called “Hey Lucy!” – and hey, Lucy sure knows how to do delicious cocktails and Italian food. Really nice dinner! The Mint Cucumber cocktail was just the right level of tart and refreshing. The giant meatball had the most incredible tomato-based sauce. The little Mac and cheese balls were surprisingly light and not gooey, and the chicken and Brie pizza with roasted garlic was surprisingly light and unsurprisingly delicious. Winner winner Lucy dinner!

It was pretty busy out there for a Tuesday night which was good to see. There was a guy in a hat trying to get the perfect shot of the trams going by, probably for a YouTube channel. And then out the front of our restaurant were a few people teaming to try and get a perfect Instagram shot, at a guess. They were there a good 20 minutes, I think it takes that long to take that perfect picture that looks completely spur-of-the-moment 🙂

After dinner, walking back to our accommodation, we saw the place that was probably a more appropriate dinner destination!

All that’s left do now is eat the cakes we bought at the market earlier in the day, but think it’ll be a while before that happens.

‘Til next time, good night 🙂

Today, we left Ottawa. We did the right thing by getting to the train station with an hour to spare before the train was due. OK … due to issues with the train, make that almost 3 hours before the train was due. Not to worry, we’re not in a rush, we still got a train, so all is well.

The VIA Rail lounge is a pleasant enough place to wait, even if just like the one at Montreal, they don’t do any food. There’s a coffee machine that does French vanilla coffee, so that was a thing. And plenty of places in the station itself that sell brekky.

This time we were prepared for the bag-weighing – they only weigh the main suitcase, not the hand luggage or the ‘additional item’ – both suitcases were just under the limit, never mind the other luggage. It’s still a bit weird since the staff don’t handle the bags at all and it all ends up on the same train… but anyway at least the bags were the correct weight.

Once the train arrived, on we popped and it was just as pleasant as last time. Good service, nice food, nice views out the window now and then, all good for a 4-ish hour journey. One great part of the trip was when someone decided to have a nice loud conversation on speakerphone, and the staff, after trying some very polite approaches, firmly had that shut down quick smart. As it should be! 🙂

Today I guess there’s not too much to write about – the train trip was pleasant, uneventful, and after arriving at the station our accommodation was only a few minutes away. It’s not that far from the CN Tower and the view is pretty nice.

Somehow, spending half a day sitting on a train doing nothing can be tiring, so a simple fast-food dinner at Popeye’s was just the ticket, followed by some delicious ice cream, covered in what was basically peanut butter Ice Magic – what’s not to love!

Toronto is certainly a much larger and more energetic place than Ottawa – it is kind like travelling from Canberra to Sydney 🙂 Should be a nice place to explore again, for the next few days.

There’s been nothing I can see in the way of Star Wars celebrations today, but there was something much more important – a Poutine Festival! (Happy Star Wars day anyway. May the 4th be with you.)

There was a huge cycling even that blocked off many ot the city streets to cars – the CN Cycle for CHEO. CHEO is the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, and judging by the number of bikes we saw I hope they made a good amount of money. At one point where we had to cross the road, a policeman was controlling the flow of pedestrian traffic, but when he wasn’t doing that he was shouting words of encouragement to every cyclist who was working their way up the hill – and was very kind to us pedestrians also. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a cheerier police office in my life, it was great to see.

Also on our walk up to the festival, what a difference a day makes! Some of the tulip beds that had nary a bud on them, were already starting to erupt into colour.

We also saw a monument to all the First Natins Canadians who have served in Canadas wars.

Before long though, we were at City Hall, and the extremely high budget fancy signage meant the place was in-missable! 😉

Sure enough, there were maybe a dozen food trucks around the park, offering a cray variety of poutine variations.

Some trucks were clearly masters of their craft:

Bonus points for being funny…

After lots of wandering ad having way too much poutine to choose from, I chose one. Creamy Dill Poutine. I chose it, and thought yay my last $20 in my wallet will cover it as it was $17.99. But I forgot about the tax you pay on everything, so it was over $20, which I didn’t have in cash. That’s when I learnt they didn’t do credit card. So…. Only 11 or so other trucks to choose from, so not really a drama.

In the end – double maple smoked bacon poutine was the winner. And it might not look to attractive, but man it was delicious!

It was quite as festival-y as it might have been, and didn’t draw the kind of crowd i thought it would, but still got some delicious lunch out of it so can’t complain! Maybe everybody else was still involved in the charity bike ride, a much more worthy cause.

After that we went for a bit of wander, getting a bit closer to the canal which was a really pleasant walk. Was also interesting to get a better view of locks that lead in to the river.

At nearby Byward Market, there was a Mexican festival on, which really drew a crowd, with a band playing as well which created a great atmosphere.

Dinner was at a Turkish restaurant we’ve walked past every day and thought ‘really should go there’ – and today we did. And so glad of that! Delicious dips, outstanding meals, A La Istanbul is a winner winner Turkish dinner.

It was a suitable way to end out stay in Ottawa, as tomorrow we’re on the move again.

Four days here was maybe one day to many, as Canada’s Canberra, I think three days would be enough, just like our own Canberra. And like Montreal it would be better to visit in mid-May or June when the city fully awakens from its slumber and the festivals all kick off in earnest. Still it’s not like I regret visiting – it has some beautiful buildings, nice markets, and a beautiful canal that it tranquil in the warmer months and must be fun as a massive skating rink in winter.

Next up, revisiting an old haunt!

Today started with brekky at a place strongly recommended to us by our guide on the hop on hope off bus yesterday – Zak’s Diner. It was close by so only a few minutes later there we were. As its nam implies, it’s a diner so service is perfunctory but still friendly. I like how they just get to the point, you order, you eat, you go. A cup of coffee appeared less than 30 seconds after I asked for one, which is always a welcome thing first thing in the morning, even if it is drip coffee.

The breakfast itself was amazing – I had eggs Benedict and Perry ordered the meat lovers breakfast. It was … a lot!

Our plan today was to wander up the road a little to city hall, to visit the Poutine Festival that is on this weekend. But with such a substantial breakfast and an oncoming food coma, there was just no point going our to look at at poutine we had no chance of being able to eat.

So, plans changed a bit. The massive Rideau Centre mall was nearby so we wandered around there finding shops, not at all disconcerting to find a few shops with security guards wearing bulletproof or stab-proof vests though… but the centre itself was fine, not at all feral. We also found these shops which were just too amusing:

And of course the Apple Store:

we took a bit of a stroll around town, to the end of the Rideau canal where a series of locks help get you down to the Ottawa River, or up to the Rideau Canal, depending on which way you’re going. Looks like that’d be a bit annoying having to navigate so many in a row to get up (or down) to the right level.

We also passed by the East, Centre, and West parliament buildings (again), which are still pretty, so yep, even more photos of them (again)

So with our plans kinda in disarray we thought we’d try the “Lady Dive!” 😂. Don’t worry, it’s just the name of the aqua-bus that does a road-and-water tour of Ottawa.

After a while we found ourselves back on dry land – it was time to get ready for (wait for it…) a show!

The venue was at least half an hour’s walk away, but as luck would have it there was a bus, and as even more luck would have it, thanks to some major changes to Ottawa’s bus routes recently, they made all public transport free this weekend – bonus! So we hopped on the bus (Number 6, to Greensboro) and here’s a random bus thing – it was a bendy bus, and there actually seats right in the middle of the accordion bit. So now you know!

Anyway – this is where we were heading:

It’s a musical. It’s a threat restaurant. It’s all about Canada. And every time they say “eh!” You have to say “eh!”. Now on the face of it, this sounds 100% cringe and cheesy – and I was 100% here for it. But, it ends up I was 100% wrong. It was basically a Canadian cultural explosion of friendliness. Beautiful Canadian food, a small troupe of Canadian singers singing all Canadian songs, highlighting everything that’s good about, you guessed it, Canada! We also got to share our table with two lovely Canadians who live hours north of Montreal – very nice to meet you Douglas and Deborah (and Happy Birthday Deborah!)

They ran through heaps of songs, and it was great to see they even took the time to do the Canadian equivalent of acknowledging Country, very nice to know they’re also on a path to reconciliation.

The staff work so hard – when they’re not singing, they’re serving, and when they’re not serving, they’re singing. They don’t get a break the whole way. Well except then they dragged someone up on stage to assist with one of the big dance numbers… we’ve kept his identity secret but you miiiight just be able to figure it out.

Among all this going on we also received a big platter of food to share. Fish, chicken, meat pie, veges, gravy … yum!

So in summary yes it was great – a fantastic advertisement for Canada, and what better way to bring people together than through food and music? Beautiful, and tariff-free 😀

All that was left to do was hop back on the (still free) bus and get back to the hotel. Top night out!

Ottawa’s Hop-on Hop-off bus doesn’t start until 10am so we had plenty of time to get up the road to the first stop. On the way, we had to visit that Canadian institution, Tim Horton’s, for a bit of breakfast.

With that very important step out of the way, we wandered up to the end (or the start?) of Spark St Mall, to get on the bus. It’s right near a fancy, and somewhat pointy, Post Office.

All aboard! Well due to the weather being a bit grey and cool (not cold – about 13 degrees) – we had the top of the bus all to ourselves, and only 3 or 4 other passengers in the downstairs section.

We learnt a few interesting things – there are lots of tulips planted in Ottawa. That’s a result of the Dutch royal family staying in exile in Ottawa during the Second World War. During this a time one of the princesses was pregnant – but to maintain the lineage of the monarchy, the child must be born on Dutch soil. So, Lo and behold, the hospital room in which the princess was staying was declared as Dutch soil, so all the rules were maintained. When the royal family were able to return home, they sent a gift of 100,000 tulip bulbs as a thank you. Nowadays, there are about 2-3 million tulips planted at this time of year. I guess it’s a tiny nit warmer here than Montreal, as a number of them have started to bloom.

We also learned that the huge Rideau canal which we followed for much of the bus route, totally freezes over in winter and they turn it in to the worlds largest naturally frozen ice rink. It is 7.8km long and becomes a bit of a community hub, not to mention a commuter corridor for people who are keen enough to skate to work.

Here are a bunch of other things we saw from the bus.

After we did a lap on the bus we took a walk down one of the shopping streets, which had some nice shops and restaurants. After a while we hopped back on the bus to get us back to Byward Market, near where we’re staying.

Byward Market is full of eateries and some Knick-knack market shops. We had a quick wander around and opted for dumplings. Delicious! Even the ‘peanut butter pork’ ones were good despite sounding a bit interesting. It mightn’t look too appetizing but it was all delicious.

Another thing we went past on the bus was all the setting up for a very important event – Poutine-fest! Surely that’s about as Canadian as it gets – so definitely gotta check that our tomorrow if we can.

For dinner we didn’t wander very far, back to ByWard Market, this time for ‘Meltwich’ – good burgers and great fries. And followed it up with Fro Yo because of course you have to have Fro Yo now and then.

Aaaand that’s about it for this quiet day. More tomorrow.

Waking up the fairly reasonable time of 6:30, the only alarm things was my phone telling me it was 2 degrees outside.

Everything outside was fine though – not even a frost. By the time we were lugging our bags to Gare Centrale, it was around 5 degrees – but considering the heavy bugs and the up-hill-ness of the journey, I was kinda grateful for the cold. It was fine. We arrived at the VIA Rail lounge to sit for a moment, enjoying their wide selection of snacks – you could have an apple, or if you didn’t want an apple, you could have … an apple. 🙂 They had a coffee machine and a choice of juices and soft drinks so that was great. It’s also of course in the middle of a great big train station with a whole bunch of food outlets so nobody’s about to starve waiting for a train.

The train was delayed by about 45 minutes, but we weren’t on any tight schedule so it wasn’t a problem. One interesting thing was that they came around the lounge with some mobile scales – fortunately not to check passengers (how much extra baggage would I cost!) but just the bags. I just scraped in but Perry’s bag was a bit over, so he had to shuffle a few things into his hand luggage. Nobody else has the handle the luggage but us, so it does seem a little funny to be worried about it (but I guess it’s a good way to charge extra fees if that’s your thing).

We boarded with our perfectly weight-distributed luggage, there was a ton of luggage space on the train which was great, then we took our seats. Yesterday Perry checked the seating map and noticed two table-seats facing each other had become available, so we shifted the booking to use those seats. Then when we boarded perhaps we learned why the seats were available. It was a bit like my flight from Hawaii to Boston – one of the seats had no window. I guess it was a trade-off – Perry gets to sit in the direction of travel but no window. I travel backwards but I have a view. Seems kinda fair?

The staff were great – not too long after being underway tea/coffee/juice was served, and a bit after that, a tasty meal of a three-cheese omelette with bacon and potatoes, some fruit and a cinnamon bun. Really tasty!

On thing about the journey that was vaguely interesting – as soon as (I guess) we left the province of Quebec, all the train announcements switched from being French first, to English first (still followed by French of course). I think the train got up to maybe 150km/h, so not exactly whizzing by but it wasn’t a real long journey so all good. I took a few photos out the window but most of them focused on the windo rather than the scenery, so this is about it for a slice of Canadian countryside:

After a bit of a train-nap, next thing I know we were arriving at our destination, Ottawa station. Kinda weird that the platform is at ground level, so getting the suitcases down the stairs from the train was a bit of fun.

The station building itself wasn’t too exciting but of course I took a photo anyway.

After a small wait, we got an Uber to the hotel. We were there kinda early so the room wasn’t ready, and luckily the owners (at a guess) saw us standing at the front all confused and let us in. It’s not exactly a hotel I guess, like not a proper reception area or anything like that, a more modern approach where they just email you codes to the front door and the room. One thing I didn’t realised when I booked it – the stairs. Happily we are only one floor up. Even more happily, one of the staff/owners carried my suitcase. Sweet!

Since the room wasn’t ready, glad we could leave the luggage there, so we could go and perform our important civic duty – vote! We booked all of this holiday before the election had been announced, and, very luckily, on one of the few days we could vote overseas, we ended up being about 15 minutes away from the Australian High Commission. There’s only 3 of them in Canada so we definitely had good luck with all that. The process was pretty much the same – cardboard fold-up voting booth and everything, and it was nice to speak to a few Aussies for a few minutes.

One thing we quickly learned about our hotel, it seems to be in an ‘interesting’ part of town judging by the number of people who don’t seem to have a home to go to. It felt a bit like years ago at Seattle, when there were plenty of homeless people near the hotel and then almost none. Well I guess Ottawa has a few more than ‘almost none’ – there seem to be quite a few people around the place who are currently experiencing homelessness.

I didn’t take photos of them of course, but I did find some pretty old buildings and things.

After voting, in lieu of a democracy sausage we stopped off at a cafe and has a delicious cheesy croissant and ice coffee. It mightn’t look the best but it sure was nice.

We ventured into the Rideau Centre, basically a big shopping mall with a Metro station build in. Big place!

Hidden in one corner was ‘Farm Boy’ a supermarket, kinda, but with lots of really fresh ingredients, and even freshly made food, both hot and cold. I didn’t get many photos coz it kinda feels weird to be taking photos in a shop. – but this was one of just several big selections of food.

We stocked up on important things like chips and yoghurt, and headed back to the room hitch was now very much ready, and very clean. Nice!

We then discovered there is an entire TV channel dedicated to “The Price Is Right’ , and promptly lost an hour or two. I must say the American version has tons more games than the Ian Turpin version ever had. And since these repeats are from 1982/3 it’s fun watching all the cringe, while remembering we lived through that time as well.

For dinner we didn’t venture too far, still trying to get the vibe on how feral the neighbourhood is, so just stopped off at a pizza joint that was more faded than glory – but the pizza itself was delicious. Yes it has pineapple on it and I am apologising to nobody! 🙂

The rain was starting to fall, so that was about it for the day. We’ve bought tickets to the hop on hop off bus for tomorrow (of course!) so we’ll hopefully get a better idea then of what Ottawa has to offer. See ya tomorrow!

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 !

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!