Mon 22 Jul - Montreal, QC

Today's loose plan - take the aubway to Montreal's Olympic Park and then wander back to our hostel.

After enjoying our breakfast in the communal room at our hostel HI Montreal yet again, we wandered to the Guy-Concordia subway station on the green line up on Rue Sainte Catherine. We got off 11 stations later at Viau as that is one of two stations that cover Montreal's Olympic site from 1976. From there on, this is how we walked...about 17km in total.

First, a couple of pics from the subway trip. This is an emergency box from Guy-Concordia station containing..., well, anything that you may need in a subway underground station emergency. Cute.

Us on the train. Yes, the photo is taken while the train is in motion and it shook and rattled quite a bit...

We arrived at Montreal's Olympic site...

The main stadium from the Olympics with its quite recognizable tower structure.

From this angle, the building looked like a face. On purpose or not?

At the football stadium, the list of prohibited items was longer than anything that we had seen. What, no vuvuzelas...?

Montreal's Olympic Park is not large and the tower of the main stadium is open for the public, BUT not until 1pm on Mondays. No way were we going to loiter around the site for another 4 hours so we wandered across Rue Sherbrooke to Parc Maisonnueve to check out that park instead.

Parc Maisonneuve appears to be a haven for cyclists, joggers / runners and walkers. It has a circular outer loop for cyclists and ad hoc paths in the centre for the others. We were impressed by this guy. He was clearly not superfit and had problems with his knees but he was given it a go.

The evidence from the severe storms from a few days ago was everywhere. This was only one place where the trees had been given a huge workout.

We walked quite a few of the paths and then sat down in the most pleasant Parc Maisonneuve for a drink and some crackers and immediately we were approached by this little fellow. OK, squirrels are essentially rats in trees, but we kind of like them and Hans couldn't help throwing pieces of crackers to him. Very cute and tame (the squirrel that is...)

Adjacent to Parc Maisonneuve is the Botanical Gardens, where there was also a horticultural art exhibition on. Well, this looked pleasant enough. Yes, the lady too.

Then, as we wandered around the perimeter to the Botanical Garden's entrance, we stopped short. These places tend to be free or at the very least be available to the public for a nominal fee. Here it cost $29.50 per person to get in - what? Looking at the map, it looked pretty much like the Botanical Gardens in Sydney, but smaller. No way Jose, we pay $60 for the two of us even if there was a horticultural art show underway. Rejected.

We then took our bearings and decided to wander back towards town via Rue Rachel where there was a bike path. We crossed over these railroad tracks which looked almost artistic.

Graffiti which we could not decipher but it kinda of made us laugh.

We crossed a small park called Jardin Communautaire Baldwin with a kid's pool called Piscine Baldwin or Baldwin Swimming pool. We used their washroom facilities and encountered another new. The men's washroom had been converted into unisex use and the men's urinals were now boarded up.

We continued onto La Fontaine Park which is just lovely. It is very different to Parc Maisonneuve in that here there was water and a theatre and this park was more for passive recreation although we did see joggers here too. Take a cue from this guy...

Down by the pond...

The pond from its northern end.

We found a bench in the shade, had our lunch that we had brought with us and watched the world go by for a while. There was an older bloke nearby who had a remote controlled yacht in the pond. He used one of those blue IKEA bags to store it in, with a hole at the bottom for the keel.

From La Fontaine Park we wandered generally in the direction of Place Des Arts, the home of the "Just for Laughs" festival which is on this week.

On the way we passed through a lovely neighborhood we think was called Le Plateau Mont-Royal (wonder why...?), with interesting architecture and trendy looking restaurants. Here are some pics from the homes we saw on the way.

We paused in another lovely park along the way called Square Saint Louis.

At the southern end of Square Saint Louis, the park turned into a nice pedestrian mall, albeit a little bit touristy, called Rue Prince Arthur.

Greek wine glasses in the sun...

Hans suddenly saw this spiel, black poster in the middle. What, Stockholm is trendy...?

We rounded the corner from Rue Prince Arthur and walked south on St Laurent Boulevard. Plenty of murals were to be seen... We didn't think that we would change jobs with these guys. Their little platform moved around up there and occasionally hit the wall. Ouch...

The Lady and the Mural...

Further down on the boulevard was a ticket office for "Just for Laughs". We enquired about a couple of shows but tickets to those were not pre-sold. We have to buy them at the venues. OK, as both venues were near us.

The guys behind Hans were queuing up for free tickets for something... Not sure what.

At Place des Festivals, there were tents and food trucks and action. However, lots of the action was around the dismantling from the African festival which concluded last night. Anyway, here is the mascot for "Just for Laughs".

At this point, we decide to walk the length of Rue Sainte Catherine back to our home territory. We stopped for a gelato/frozen yogurt and we saw this guy diagonally across the street outside McD claiming to be "McHungry". He probably thought that he was very clever coming up with that slogan.

We wandered back to our hostel, did a bit of washing and relaxed before going down to the communal kitchen to make dinner where... the infamous French school group was having their dinner.

We were introduced to them last night when they returned to their rooms at 11pm and then did the typical school kid thing of running up and down the corridors checking out each others rooms. So you can imagine the dining area - Yep, loud. Yep, messy. Yep, kids everywhere. The kitchen itself was almost empty and surprisingly also clean (the kids seemed to be eating cereal and pastries).

We took a punt that when Di had finished cooking our pasta boscaiola, that the kids would be mostly gone...and we were right. All gone and a lovely pasta dinner in peace with some red wine. All good apart from a small red wine accident where Hans tipped red wine over his... red shorts. Yep, could have been worse.

Back to our room after dinner to plan the next few days and to blog. Good night.

 

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