An Australian in Montreal (the second)

And then there were two....

We randomly decided that we wanted to go to Montreal again. Our first mistake: taking the 4am bus on saturday morning. And going to bed at 2am. That bus ride was so bad. I cant remember being more tired in a long time. Second mistake: deciding to find accomodation when we got there. That wasn't very much fun before 7am. Place we found didn't give us a reciept for payment or anything, so mildy dodgy but it was totally fine. After a quick nap-a-roo, we went to a place called the biodome. One of the girls I went with, Marie, is doing quite a bit of biology so she really wanted to go. I was reluctant because I was worried I would learn something, but it was really great! It was kind of like a zoo, woth heaps of cool animals in different simulated environments. I think I liked the penguins the best. Does anyone remeber doing Peter Coombes ( I think it was him anyway) peguin walk when they were little? Anyone? It was at the old Montreal Olympic stadium which was cool, very 70s in design, so different when you compare it to Sydney or even what they are doing now in Beijing.

We went back to our hotel to meet up with the rest of our group (only Marie Yvonna and I went to the Biodome) but we got our wires crissed so we missed them. So we ended up wandering into the old part of town, which is amazing. An example of the nice mixed with the dodgy: we had decided to walk, and came accross a nice park we wanted to walk through. It was in a really pretty area, and we walked through the gate. After looking around at the people there and what was going on, we decided that it was probably not such a good idea to wlak through the park after all. We got to the old town and that was so beautiful, very very European. The parliament building are great. We wandered into the square in front of the buildings and there was a street performer there who was, cioncidently, from Australia! Small world. Anyway, there was a mini-kind of market with lots of jewelry, so i got some made. Then we wandered down these awesome cobbled streets and had a late lunch.

At the Botanic gardens there was a Chinese latern festival that night. We decided to go, and I am not exaggerating, it was one of the coolest things I have even seen. They have a massive Chinese garden and it was just full of laterns in all these amazing colours! the lake/big pond had these huuuge latern boats with patern latern rowers and everything. There were fruit and vegetable patches filled with, coincidentally, fruit and vegetable shaped laterns. It was soooooo coool, the best thing in Montreal by far.

After the Botanic gardens, went out for dinner in Chinatown again (were afterwards very disappointed that the store selling massive hello kitty dolls and pillows was closed) which was very nice. We went to a restaurant with an octagon shaped door, which I wanted to go to because last time one of the boys didn't want to go because he didn't like the shape of the door. I suppose it is just as good a way as any to choose between restaurants.

So this time saw more of Montreal and loved what I saw :) Even learned stuff at the Biodome!

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