Carl's Blog

I’ve decided to organize this year’s trip by the cities visited versus a daily journal.  I will start with Montreal, then Quebec and finally Halifax.  I will include photos and comments from the train trip as its own post.  So let’s begin…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Montreal, Canada is the most populous city of the province of Quebec.  (And yes I used wikipedia for that fact.) Of all the cities I visited it was the most “modern” feeling, ie. in line with New York City or Dallas.  There were plenty of skyscrapers and office buildings which interfered with my phones GPS from time to time just like when I was in downtown NYC a few Spring Breaks ago.

When my trip began I wasn’t sure I was going to even make it to Canada.  I don’t remember why I picked flights out of DFW going to Montreal that had me switching planes, I’m going to guess it was cost.  This did prove to add some “adventure” to the start of the trip.  My first flight from DFW to Newark was on time and landed without any issues; however, I had setup my layover to be only about 30 minutes between flights and as would be expected I had to go from one end of the concourse to the opposite side.  I made it to my flight as United was making one of its last calls for passengers.  I do want to point out, I was not the last person. There were 3 other people that boarded the plane after me.  This plane from Newark to Montreal was delayed for an extra 15 minutes because of a maintenance issue, one of the overhead bins would not close.  The mechanic arrived hit the mechanism with his hammer a few times, and boom. All is well.  The mechanic left the plane to cheers. Cabin door can now be closed and we can be pushed back from the terminal and wait our turn to taxi and take off.  Here is were the camels back got broken.  When we got pushed back from the terminal, we were parked a bit too close to one of the other planes which had that plane’s pilot request that we get moved a bit more.  This is now by my count delay 3, it’s only like 10 minutes but these little delays are about to add up.  We finally get setup to wait our turn to taxi to the runway and we wait and wait. About 15 minutes later the pilot announces that the flight has been canceled due to the fact the pilot’s on duty clock was going to tick past the allowed safety window.  Oh and also, all those delays had made us miss out window with traffic control and our flight was sort of forgotten.  We get to be taken back to the terminal and have to de-board the plane and wait for a reserve crew to be found that can continue the flight.  To shorten the story, because honestly you are reading this to see and here about Montreal, the reserve crew is found, they are not happy about it, 3 hours late finally take off.  We arrive in Montreal very late and the Montreal airport has to find us a terminal to park, so a short wait on the plane.

So I’m finally in Canada.  I’ve not traveled out of country very much but I do like Canadian Customs the best.  You have your passport scanned at a kios, answer some question on the touch screen, take your printed report to one of the Canadian Customs officers and you are done.

My first praise of Montreal is its public transportation. I was able to get a 24 hr pass to use the buses and the subway for $10 Canadian = $7.56 US.  There is a special bus that runs from the airport to downtown, every 30 minutes.  And even with the construction going on, the bus stop is only 1 block from my hotel, Le Nouvel Hotel and Spa.

I get checked into my hotel, by 9 PM and quickly head down to the hotel’s restaurant/bar order a burger, fries and a local red ale.

It is now June 29th, 7:30 AM local time and I’m dressed and ready for my tour of Montreal.  I head down Rue Sainte-Catherine capturing pokemon and visiting poke stops as I head to the tourist information office (0.8 mile walk) to get my ticket for the bus tour of Montreal.

The tour leaves at 9 AM so I have time for breakfast, at La Belle Province.  It is a “greasy spoon” dinner with 50’s decor.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I had the breakfast with 2 eggs, 2 sausage, potatoes. When you look at the menu, notice that French is the larger font and English is the smaller.  I mention this because in Montreal and Quebec, French is the dominate language.  The street signs, warning signs, bathroom signs and menus are all in French.  When you walk into any place, you will be greeted friendly with, “Bonjour”  By the end of my trip I was able to say bonjour well enough that instead of switching to English automatically, the server or store clerk would continue in French.  When speaking with one of the attendance on the trains, that is one of the tests they had to take, being fluent in French and English.

Breakfast done, and happy tummy it was time for the 3.5 hour tour of Montreal.

The first stop was Old Montreal and Basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We had about 30 minutes here to explore the church or walk around Place d’Armes square.  Since the line to get inside seemed a bit long and I didn’t want to pay the $6 entry fee, I just walked around the square, listening to a street musician and taking more photos.

Maisonneuve Monument

Saint-Sulpice Seminary

Bank of Montreal head office

We board the tour bus again and continue the tour crossing the St. Lawrence River to Ile Sainte-Helene and Ile Notre-Dame so we could get a view of the Biosphere.

Leaving Ile Sainte-Helene we cross the Jascques Cartier Bridge heading toward the Olympic Stadium. (The stadium is the white dome under the bridge.)

We had another 30 minutes by Chalet Du Parc Maisonneuve, which is a huge bicycling park with trails running all through it just north of the Montreal Botanical Gardens.

Now here I’m going to pause the bus tour and time travel forward to July 5 when I returned to Montreal and visited the Botanical Gardens. The Chinese Garden portion was being remodeled so extra walking was added, plus it was 98 degrees so I only saw a portion of the Botanical Gardens. Below’s slide show are some of the pictures I took while there:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

And we time travel back to June 29th and continue on the Montreal bus tour.  The tour continues up and around Mont Royal, the hill towering up in the middle of Montreal, to Vue Mt Royal which gives you a wonderful view of Montreal.  I took some cool photos with my phone, but they are sphere and panoramic view so they don’t post well.  Here is the best from my camera.  You can see Olympic stadium to the North.

Next we circled around to Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal our last “stop”.  This Catholic Cathedral was started (wikipedia clip) “in 1904, Saint André Bessette, C.S.C., began the construction of St. Joseph”, and after some upgrades and expansion it was completed in 1967.  Another quick clip from wikipedia… “The basilica is dedicated to Saint Joseph, to whom Brother André credited all his reported miracles. These were mostly related to some kind of healing power, and many pilgrims (handicapped, blind, ill, etc.) poured into his Basilica, including numerous non-Catholics. On display in the basilica is a wall covered with thousands of crutches from those who came to the basilica and were purportedly healed. Pope John Paul II deemed the miracles to be authentic and beatified Brother André in 1982. In October 2010 Pope Benedict XVI canonized the saint.”

The tour continues with no further stops and “get out to look” points.  We drove around the old cemeteries on the side of Mount Royal where we learned they were treated as public parks with walking trails.

We did drive through a bunch of residential sections and almost all of the apartments and condos were built with porches and walk up stairs some were curved, others bent.  Our tour guide and pointed out that to save space on the inside, the stairs were all placed outside and he kept repeating that public housing was placed within regular housing all through the city so there was no “ghetto” areas and from outside it was very hard to tell which housing complexes were for low income families.  According to the tour guide Montreal is also one of the safest cities in North America.

With the tour concluded I decided it was time to visit a museum. I had a choice between an art museum featuring Picasso or a history museum featuring Queens of Egypt and archaeological digs under Montreal’s modern streets.  I went with the history museum.

Here are some of the Egyptian artifacts:

The next part of the museum was the history of Montreal with preserved archaeological dig sites you could walk through or over (glass floor).

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

After exiting the museum my next quest was to find place to have some poutine.  Here is were I had some issues with my phone and GPS.  It didn’t help that Google was showing me the location Pub St-Paul and not the location to the door to entry the restaurant.  That was actually on Rue-Saint Paul; however, Google kept showing the place on Rue de la Commune.  So here it is a picture of poutine.  The dish all my Canadian friends talk about how great it is.

My only issue is that the brown gravy made the french fries very soggy, but the melted cheese curds almost made up for the sogginess.  I would eat this dish again, just not on this trip.  I should have tried it in each city, but honestly, my first taste was disappointing.  I should have returned to the dinner I had breakfast, for a sample of their poutine.  I noticed the amount of fresh cut french fry potatoes they had soaking in the sinks.  I’m guessing they were getting ready for the lunch crowd.  This concludes the Montreal portion of this trip.  Enjoy pictures of the train station I took the next morning waiting for the 9:15 train to Quebec.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.