A stopover in Montreal

---

Geo: 45.5075, -73.5587

Good to spend more time with Abby and JP and little Elodie of course, putting us up in their flat in a funky neighbourhood in the culturally vibrant city of Montreal. We heard more about life in this busy city from them, and about life of university academics, than we observed first hand, both the all too short, busy summer past and their forebodings for the cold winter to come. We went out to eat at a great French resturant in the local neighbourhood and toured the parks on a beautiful, cold, crisp morning the next day. Bracing temperatures of 5 degrees the last few days, alternately sunny and rainy, certainly suggest that winter is not far away. We didn't envisage quite such low temperatures and we're carrying a very limited wardrobe in 2 cases for cold weather.

Traffic in Montreal is mental, a plethora of urban motorways construced of what looks like old and fraying concrete and you have to make instant decisions about lane change at 70mph as the signs give you almost no notice. Then as we made our way to Abby's place following our wander round the historic old town we got into a long and very slow moving queue and discovered, when we got to the front, a bus surrounded by fire engine, police, ambulances etc. Instead of reading '38 to Montreal' or whatever on its board it was flashing POLICE 911 which I guess must be the way the driver summons help. Still don't know what was happening, but it was dramatic.
Oh - and we had snowflakes on the drive from Peterborough,not many, but definitely snowflaks!

---