Canadian Maritime Provinces

Pretrip Continues: Montreal, Quebec

On Wednesday, Aug. 1, we left Quebec City and drove by bus to Montreal. It took about three hours and we made one comfort stop along the way. The first stop when we arrived in the city was for a delicious lunch at a restaurant that specialized in beef brisket. There we picked up a local guide for an afternoon overview of the city. The first stop was at the E Commerce Center. The center of this building is the location of the former city wall. They covered it over and placed there some artwork in the form of a reflecting pool, a statue, and a piece of the Berlin Wall.

The driving tour took us along the waterfront and then up the Rue Sherbrooke that passes McCord Museum and the University of McGill. We drove by our hotel - a Best Western at the corner of Rue Peel. We drove up Mount Royal where there is a large city park at the top. This gave us a nice overview of the city. We were on our own for dinner and from the hotel we walked a few blocks down Peel to Alexandre, a nice restaurant that had outside seating. 

Thursday was a day completely on our own. I put Paul in charge of planning our day and he did an excellent job. After breakfast we headed for the closest Subway (Metro) station. It took help to figure out how to buy all-day passes, but soon we were headed for The Notre-Dame Cathedral. We had to change trains once to get there. Notre-Dame is a beautiful cathedral and we enjoyed viewing the interior for a while. Next we headed down the hill toward the harbor and the Rue Saint Paul, which is a pedestrian street lined with interesting shops geared toward tourists. From there we walked to the Hotel de Ville, which Paul thought was a hotel. Nope, a policeman explained to him that “Hotel de Ville” in French translates as “City Hall.”  We then headed for the Metro again and retraced our steps stopping at the Place des Arts. We discovered quite an underground area of shops at this stop, but we found our way out and had lunch a La Cage, which is a sports bar. They had a lovely eating area outside, and it was a pleasant day. The weather frequently seemed like it would rain, but it didn’t. By the time we finished lunch it was mid afternoon so we decided to call it quits on our day’s adventure and return to the hotel. I managed to get checked in for our flight the next day, using my trusty iPad Pro. For dinner we went back to Alexandre’s and our guide, Anne, joined us. The rest of the evening was spent getting ready to leave in the morning. 

​Bags were out by 9:30 and we left for the airport. Our flight to Halifax was about 1:20 and only took about 1 1/2 hours. We lost another hour as Halifax is on Atlantic Daylight Time, which is four hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time.

That is all for now. More about Halifax in the next post.
​Grace and Paul