The last couple days have been busy. Wednesday...did not start out as the best day ever. (Not the worst, either, mind you! But not the best.) The weather was crappy and wet. I had my Gore-tex packed, and I am from the Wet Coast, so a little rain wasn't going to deter me! It seemed like the right weather to visit the cemetery at the top of Mont Royal, and then go over to the look-out at the Chateau.
Well, I got as far as the cemetery:
And then I kind of got turned around, and thought I was somewhere I wasn't, and I sort of walked around - not lost, exactly, but kind of misplaced - for a couple of hours. In the rain. In a cemetery with very windy, convoluted paths - so I couldn't just walk straight back to the bus stop. And then I had to pee, but I couldn't find the office - I briefly considered dropping trou behind a gravestone by a shrub, but even though I'm not religious, I'm pretty sure you go straight to hell if you pee on a gravestone. So I kept walking till I found the office (and a bathroom! Thank Bob!). A very nice (Anglophone) lady pointed me down the hill....in the opposite direction from where I knew the bus to be. So I called my sister, who was conveniently both at home and near a computer, and being a dutiful younger sibling, she found me the number for Montreal transit. Then, probably to make up for that time she punched me when we were kids, she used the power of her mind to send a taxi my way.
By now, my feet were frozen and very tired, and I was not a happy camper. Then I went for lunch, which either really didn't agree with me, or actually gave me mild food poisoning. And the rain really started pouring, and the bus stop near the metro was closed so I had to walk even further...Needless to say, by the time I got back to the hotel, I was pretty cranky, and ready for a nap!
At that point, I was thinking that just staying in my room till my flight left on Saturday wouldn't be a bad idea. Happily, it was a good nap! I woke up just in time to fly out the door for a show at the Basilica of Notre Dame. It was a light/sound/film kind of thing, on the history of both the church and the city...cheesy, but fun, and we had a few minutes afterward to look around the Basilica. It's a most impressive building!
Walking back to the metro, I saw this, which amused me:
Friday, I woke up to clear skies, wishing I could have a do-over of the day before. So I went right back up Mont Royal, followed a couple tourists with guidebooks, and found the Chalet & look-out with no problems.
Inside - a Lego replica of the mountain & the Chalet:
On the way back down to the bus, some very cheeky squirrels:
It was bloody cold out, though, so I stopped to get some hot lunch before going down to Vieux Montreal for another poke around...Wandered into an old church or two, talked to a couple of artists who were selling photos on the street, bought some cheesy souvenirs, and just enjoyed the ambiance... 
I've been seeing some rather amusing cheese ads in the metro; this one especially tickles my funny bone:
Finding dinner was a bit of an adventure on Friday night, but I was determined to Go Out And Have Fun on my last night here. And I did! After dinner, I actually stopped to look at a building I've walked past several times this week:
Eeek! I'm such a geek. Inside, it turns out, you can watch any of several thousand National Film Board productions...for free! (I love living in Soviet Socialist Canuckistan.) So of course, I went inside. Watched the Log Driver's Waltz short; a cool animated Inuit legend - in Inuktitut; and a documentary from the '60s on the science and legends of the Northern Lights.
1 comment:
Montreal: Très Magnifique!
Also, very glad you didn't drop trou in the cemetery. I'm sure some sort of zombie/Carrie hand would have come up out of the ground and grabbed you. Shudder!
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