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Published: October 13th 2013
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Olympic parkBeautiful sunny warm day here in Montreal - fantastic weather for Thanks Giving Weekend.
Had a good breakfast down in the foyer of the hotel. The receptionist told us she got robbed last night as she was walking down the Main Street. Someone grabbed her handbag and took off. Nobody helped her and you could see she was distressed about the incident - and the police were not interested about it one bit! So here I was thinking that Montreal felt like a very safe city - but I guess it's no different to anywhere you travel -Geoff went and checked on our rental car - all good - sigh of relief!
Then she tells us that 3 weeks ago a 72 year old lady was stabbed to death outside the IGA - that's it we will be home before dark this evening! Sometimes it pays not go know these things - last night I didn't even think twice about walking home at 10pm!
Our plan today was to visit the Montreal Botanical Gardens. When we got to the Metro we asked the person in the ticket booth if she spoke English - her answer - "unfortunately yes"...
Observation deck at Olympic ParkMany of the French Canadians simply refuse to speak English...now that we finally found someone who understood us we were able to buy a 24hr pass for the Metro - $9 each per day - much cheaper than what we've been paying (separate ticket for each ride $3.25 each). With that sorted we were on with the day.
After getting off the Metro we walked up to the botanical gardens - walking past Olympic Park - home to the 1976 games. The place is looking rather dated and was mostly being used by skate board riders today. There is an observation deck with an unique lift system which is on the side of the building. After taking a few photos we continued on to the gardens.
Admission into the gardens was $18.75 each and worth every cent. The gardens play patronage to numerous different garden styles, cultures and exhibitions. The highlight for us were the beautiful Chinese and Japanese garden sections...simply stunning.
The Chinese gardens were inspired by the private gardens of the Ming Dynasty and is considered to be the largest of its kind outside of China. They had Chinese pastries for sale here so we
Entrance to botanical gardensbought one to try - interesting texture and not as sweet as we expected.
The stone, water and plants in the Japanese garden display combine together to produce a pure and simple environment. Every element in the display is created with symbolism in mind.
Another highlight was the huge topiary, sculptured creations scattered throughout the park. They are simply amazing - the amount of work that must go into these sculptures is simply amazing. The gardens currently has around 50 living sculptures that grace a 2.2 km circuit through the heart of the gardens.
Some of the other exhibits we saw include alpine garden, peace garden, aquatic garden, rose garden, and the First Nations garden. Also interesting were the many greenhouses and the Halloween exhibits.
The insectarium is the largest museum devoted to insects to North America. Children were totally fascinated by the live insect displays.
The gardens are so large (spread over 75 hectares) that we were there most of the day. We stopped at the restaurant for a lunch break - so relaxing sitting in the warm sun surrounded by the magic of the gardens.
We had plans of visiting Mont Royal
Bonsai in the greenhouseafter finishing at the botanical gardens - we got the metro to the area we needed to go to but at that point we decided to go no further - exhaustion meant the legs were not going to make it another four or five blocks...
Walking through the Metro we stopped to take in the sheer size of this underground mall system that runs through the city.
Metro back to the hotel - picked up panini's on the way home - then sat out on the hotel patio and enjoyed a beer or two and chatted with hotel staff.
Tomorrow we will drive to Quebec city where we've been told - French is the Language that will be spoken!
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