Hello jet lag my old friend, I’ve come to speak with you again. Despite sleeping for a few hours on the flight from LA, and dropping off as soon as my head hit the pillow, still woke up at 0530.
Had the included breakfast then headed out to look around Montreal, the sun was shining and it was a bit chilly but promised to get warmer so I left my jacket behind. Walked about 20 minutes to the old part of Montreal and down to the old port. There was a lot of construction going on all over the place, and we were dodging trucks and noisy building sites. I was regretting leaving my jacket behind as the wind picked up and it got a bit cold, but once the sun came out it wasn’t too bad.
The old town was quite pleasant, buildings dating back to the mid 1800s and one that purported to be from 1655. Walked around a bit then decided to stop for a coffee. Asked for a medium but the mugs she brought out were the size of buckets so changed to a small, and even these would be considered large in Australia.
By the way, if you were transported here without knowing, you’d think you were in France, because everyone speaks French and all the signs and shop names are French.
Walked around the corner to the cathedral, paid our $5 each to go inside, and it was very impressive – lots of ornate carving and Song said it looked like a theatre with the way it was lit.
Took some photos as usual, then carried on walking to the underground shopping mall at the train station – I think it’s the largest underground mall in the world. It gets down to -30 in the winter so they put the shops underground which makes sense. We stopped at a restaurant in the food court which wasn’t too flash, but they served poutine, which I had heard the name of but didn’t know what it was until I looked it up – chips with cheese covered in gravy. Not exactly gourmet fare but when in Rome…
Song ordered a club sandwich.
I’d definitely eat poutine again – as long as I hadn’t eaten in 5 days and the alternative was roadkill or a turd, and I’d seriously consider the others first. Song said it looked like vomit. Yeah, never again.
We needed a small travel kettle to make tea, the one we had is the wrong voltage for North America, so we trudged around the shopping mall looking for one. We must have visited every home wares shop but they only had big ones. I think it would have been easier to locate the holy grail. We left the mall after a couple of hours and walked back to the hotel via Chinatown because we figured we would find a shop that sold one – and we did. By the time we got to the hotel the jet lag was taking its toll and we were shattered. We decided to nap for about an hour.
Woke up, then I popped around the corner to the metro to find out the train times because we had to be at the main station early the next day to get a train to Kingston. Got back to the hotel and Song had decided we were going to Mount Royal – Montreal is named after it. We got the metro, then on a bus, then didn’t know where to get off and managed to miss it. Stayed on the bus because it just went back again and got off where there was a view over the city. There were lots of other people there as well as a few raccoons picking rubbish out of the bins. We’d not seen raccoons before – they’re like giant possums.
Got back on the bus, then back to the hotel and bed. We skipped dinner, neither of us was hungry.
An early start tomorrow to get the 0645 train.
