Montreal eh!

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We really enjoyed our all too brief trip to Montreal, a city that seems to suffer from an identity crisis but is a great city to visit with beautiful natural features, a fascinating history and a vibrant population.

I started the morning in a very healthy way, going for a 10km run, the first half of which was along the picturesque McGill University, where all of the staff were on strike and protesting, and then up the very steep Mont Royal, a huge park on the hill that overlooks the city. The views from the top were fantastic on this very sunny morning so I stopped for a break and then ran back down the hill which was much easier! There were so many people out running, riding and even doing some weird sort of cross between roller blading and skiing activity! I'm guessing most of them were university students from the nearby campus.

We then hit the old town for a walking tour which started at the impressive Notre Dame Basilica and went through the old town pointing out numerous important buildings such as the impressive City Hall and the oldest bank in Canada (the head office of the Bank of Montreal). Our guide is a local and has that annoying habit of ending every sentence with "eh" which seems common amongst Canadians. Reminds me of the joke about them not knowing what to name their country, so they just pulled letters out of a hat which were C eh, N eh, D eh...

I guess being a French colony overtaken by British and then trying unsucessfully to be independent from Canada has been difficult for these people and our guide is quite funny in being quite opinionated about her view that Britain overtook the French colony because they had the money, but now they don't need (or have) British money, so they should go back to being French. However, it seems at least on the surface that the meshing of British and French cultures works quite well in Montreal.

We then headed up the Olympic Stadium precinct where we did a tour of the 70,000 seat stadium and olympic pool area from a very funny local who pointed out that the 76 Olympics was the first time a host nation did not win a gold medal. Not that I could brag about anything considering Australia did not win a gold medal either. There is the flags of the 26 nations that won gold medals in Montreal at the front of the stadium and like all Australians that visit, it was cringe-worthy to see a New Zealand flag and no Australian flag.

The fascinating thing about the stadium is that is was only finished after the olympics with the creation of the roof which could not be put on the stadium, but rather suspended from an inclined tower which is the largest inclined tower in the world. We took the funicular to the top of the tower which gave us views of the city, albeit from a fair way out given the suburban location of the olympic precinct.

We then took the rest of the afternoon to explore Mont Royal in more detail, particularly the area around Monument Sir-George-Etienne-Cartier, which is a huge park near the university which seemed to contain lots of groups of young people smoking weed and playing bongos. Makes me wish I was back at university! There is also university games going on at Molson Stadium.

We finished the day with dinner in the pedestrian street Prince Arthur, which is buzzing with restaurants and people out drinking on a balmy Friday night.

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