Walking around Old Montreal

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After sleeping in until nearly 9 am, we had a quick breakfast in the hostel, then headed for the métro, where we bought a three-day pass. Our first trip was to Place des Armes, the closest stop to Old Montreal. On our way into this area, we came across a very interesting small museum, the Musée du Chateau Ramesay, that gave a timeline of the city starting when it was called Hochelaga by the local natives, through Ville Marie under the French, then Montreal under the English (there were even brief American occupiers) before becoming the modern Montréal.

With a firm grasp on the history, we wandered throughout Old Montreal, imagining what it might have been like to have lived here two or three hundred years ago. Down at the Vieux Port, we lucked into a small tall ship exhibition and though we elected not to tour the ships, we were able get a good view of them from a high vantage point. Then we had a lovely lunch at a Portuguese restaurant on on rue Saint Paul -- Roberta had moules et frites, and I had a cool bowl of gazpacho. We then walked the streets of Old Montreal until we got tired enough to want to come home for a rest.

While down near the seaway, the weather was fairly good, with a fresh breeze off the water, but coming back up to catch the metro back to our auberge it got quite sticky. We are very happy the auberge is air conditioned. Our room is almost meat-locker chilly in fact. To make it comfortable after the sun goes down, we have had to turn on the baseboard heaters, and we are clearly not the first to have done this, because when we arrived yesterday we found them on, to our amazement (and turned them off). But last night and tonight we've had them back on to keep from being frozen. It seems there is only one setting on the central air, and that is ON, and our basement room seems to be situated such that it gets a big dose of ON, as the other rooms we've been in here are not this cold. Still, heat wimps that we've become since living in Vancouver, we're grateful for the coolness even while feeling a bit guilty about using more power to mitigate the heat.

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Comments

[Maggie]

What fun
You make me want to get in the car and drive there toute de suite! Kath, I see your opting for the two-tailed hairdo. As I've let my hair get longer and longer, that's become my favourite option too, especially when travelling!I also note the omnipresent knitting bag. You are so industrious... Keep those posts coming.

[Robert]

Hochelaga...
... has a nice ring to it. Perhaps you could petition Pauline Marois to change the name?

[VW Vagabonds]

Petition...
I haven't seen Pauline around but if I do I'll mention it...