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Published: July 18th 2007
chapel organ
much smaller than the other one, but still nice! Today we ventured out to explore Old Montreal and the port area. This was a few blocks walk from our hotel, but it was a nice day, not too hot or cold. This area of town is pretty, however I have to admit, not nearly as pretty as Quebec. But maybe I should try not to compare!
The area is full of pretty old buildings and the port area is a mixture of new and old. The streets are pretty quiet as well, which makes wandering around a breeze.
The one really stellar part of Montreal, from the small part of it we saw, is the Notre Dame Basilica. A little bit of history below:
The Notre-Dame parish's history dates back tothe origins of Montreal, which was founded in 1642. Until 1659 the chapel was just a small simple wooden chapel. A stone church was built between 1672 and 1683. by 1800 the church was no longer big enough and beginning in 1824 and finishing in 1829, the new Basilica was built.
The architect was James O'Donnell, an Irish Protestant from NY!!! He eventually converted to Catholocism and died in 1830 and was buried on the church
original window
one of only two that survived the fire grounds, the only person to have been buried there.
Anyway, its a gorgeous church. Lots of blues, reds, purple and gold and silver inside. One particularly impressive part of the Basilica is the pipe organ. Built by the renowned Casavant Brothers of Saint-Haycinthe in 1891. It has four keyboards, 99 stops and 7000, yes, 7 thousand pipes!!!!
The is also a smaller wedding chappel in the church, which was totally destroyed by fire and 1978 (except for two windows) and was rebuilt between 1979 and 1982. this also has a pipe organ, but this one only has about 1600 pipes!! There is also a large bronze sculpture, made of 32 panels, that depicts the 3 stages of life - childhood, adulthooh and death, with pictures of Jesus, the holy Spirit and rays of sun depicting God at the top.
Everything in this Basilica is gorgeous. Made the trip to old montreal totally worthwhile.
In the afternoon we walked back to the main part of montreal and had lunch, then went to see Transformers. There was a moment of concern when we thought that the movie might have been dubbed into French, but then I remembered that
someone had told me that movies aren't dubbed until they are put to DVD. Even if this isn't accurate, the movie was in English, so all good!!
A quiet evening after that. We're off back to Toronto tomorrow for our last night in Canada and of our trip. 8 weeks realy has flown! On one hand it seems like only yesterday we arrived in Las Vegas and were checking into the Bellagio, but then again, it also seems like ages ago, probably because we've done so much since then.
Day 56 - Travel to Toronto
Today was a fairly uneventful day. We caught our last train for the trip, back to Toronto from Montreal. Most of the middle of the day was taken up with that and then once we arrived in Toronto, I spent the rest of the day pretty much slacking off and relaxing.
Day 57 - Travel from Toronto to London baby!
Toni and I both had flights out around 6pm today, which worked well. At least, we thought it would! We had a quiet morning and checked out with our large amounts of luggage. Its amazing how much you can accumulate,
Notre Dame Basilica
inside the Basilica, the front of the church even with sending stuff home along the way! We got out to the airport around 3pm and as we were flying separate airlines, we arranged to meet back at a certain point after checking in, in order to go through security together. Unfortuantely this plan didn't work that well, as US airlines have separate security areas, so once Toni was through security, she was in a separate section to me. So it was goodbye via text message for the two of us. Not really the most appropriate way to end 8 weeks travelling together, but we will probably go on another trip in the future, so I'm sure it won't be the last way we'll say goodbye!
I had an overnight flight to London, arriving 6.30 am on Saturday 21 July.
Nothing exciting to report on the flight. About 8 hours of feeling like a cow being herded into a cattle yard, but all in all, not that bad!
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