Canada: Montréal, Part 1 (Weds 30th - Thursday 31st July 2014)

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The St. Lawrence river, with the third largest drainage area in North America covering 1,610,000m²from its farthest draining site in the Great Lakes, runs from the outflow of Lake Ontario through two provinces - Ontario and Québec - out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence at its enormous estuary. From Lake Ontario to its mouth, it also happens to flow through several of Canada's major cities - including Toronto, Montréal, Québec and, by way of a major tributary, the nation's capital Ottawa - which makes it a convenient base for the itinerary of a first trip to Canada. Without having planned it deliberately, this 2 1/2 week trip almost entirely took place along the St. Lawrence River and its sources, providing a thematic continuity to it all. Flying out from Paris, my trip began with five nights in Montréal, taking in a 3-day music festival while there, before moving to stay with a friend in Ottawa for two nights, catching a gig in Toronto and staying two nights to explore the city, spending three more nights in Ottawa and then heading north to Québec City for two nights to see the old town and do some whale-watching out on the St. Lawrence estuary before heading back to Montréal to catch a flight home.

After arriving mid-Wednesday afternoon and spending the evening getting over the jetlag, my first full day in Montréal was spent exploring the city's Old Town - which, although wowing many North American tourists, won't bowl over many European visitors with the majority of its buildings dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries. It's picturesque, though - included in these photos are shots from inside the Basilique Notre-Dame cathedral, around the city's old port and waterfront including a couple of shots inside one of the city's oldest churches, and from Square Victoria (note the French Canadian use of 'Square' rather than 'Place' - we're in Québec here), where a statue of a British monarch coexists peacefully with a Parisian metro entrance (rather at odds with the rest of Montréal's modern metro stations and given to the city from the French government for Expo '66) and big North American skyscrapers, marking the end of Vieux-Montréal and the beginning of the downtown banking district and conveniently summing up Montréal's very unique cross-cultural heritage. Thrown in at the beginning as a bonus is a picture of the (ridiculous) first meal that I decided to order from Reuben's deli on the night of my arrival, where I foolishly tried to eat two regional specialities in one meal - Poutine (chips, cheese curds and gravy) and smoked meat sandwiches. Note that a) this combination is almost never done by Montréalers and b) my eyes were a lot bigger than my stomach this time. The photo doesn't really do real poutine justice either, so rest assured that although I wasn't constantly snapping every meal I ate in Canada, the majority of my poutine tastings after this one were vastly superior.

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