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Published: June 18th 2009
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Every time I travel to a new place, the spirit of adventure and discovery heightens my energy level. I was awake by 6:30 am and shoved everyone in the car by 7 am. Montreal is so close to Albany; take less than 3 hours to get there, yet we never took the initiative to visit. But this year, I was determined to go there as I was craving for Europe and this was the next best thing. We reached Montreal at 10 am and the GPS directed us straight to the Biodome, where we parked in the assigned parking lot and proceeded to check out the much talked about site by Montreal visitors. The facility allowed us to walk through replicas of four ecosystems found in the Americas:
The Tropical Forest is a replica of the South American rainforest. This was my favorite, well created and natural looking, with lots of animals, colorful fishes and birds. I am a sucker for the tropics and nothing surpasses the beauty of the tropics. The Laurentian Forest is a replica of the North American wilderness. The Saint Lawrence Marine Eco-system is an estuary habitat modeled on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. A polar
area that is divided into Arctic and Antarctic. Kids loved watching the penguins in this section.
The Olympic stadium by the Biodome is a beautiful, sexy structure. The Jardine du botanique next to it was enormous and we had to take a train to move within. There was a Japanese garden, a Chinese garden with lanterns, a tree house and also an Insectarium. The kids had a wonderful time climbing trees and amusing themselves amidst the flora and fauna.
We roamed around through the quaint streets of Montreal and absolutely loved it. It is very European, more French, though people did speak some English here. It is very cultural yet cosmopolitan and proud of its French legacy and French language. We noticed a large gay population. All road signs, signals, public information, transportation, government and public advertising are in French. But most of Montreal stores, taxis, hotels, restaurants and bars have English speaking staff (menus are often translated in tourist areas).
We ate crepes and poutines in a French bistro, the poutines are a delicious concoction of French fries topped with cheese. We bought a pizza and drove up to Mont Royal. This is the city's largest
and most popular park and was designed by the creator of New York's Central Park. It's a beautiful park, lovely with fountains and lush greenery. We went to the observation point from where we could see entire city of Montreal and the Olympic stadium’s gorgeous structure stood out. We sat there eating refreshing ice creams and drinking in the view.
Vieux-Montreal is one of the most beautiful, well preserved and living "old town". People went about in Caleche (horse-drawn) carriage rides. There were tons of art galleries, museums, shops and musicians around. We stood by the vieux-port of Montreal watching the boats and yachts. We walked past the Notre Dame Cathedral, a cheap imitation of the one in Paris : )), China Town, Little Italy and many regular as well as gay pubs. We stumbled upon a colorful street called rue du Prince Albert and decided that’s where we were gonna eat because it looked very musical and entertaining and there were so many side_walk restaurants including an indian one. We decided on Tamale’s a beautiful Mexican place that reminded me of the one that we went to in San Diego - Fred’s. Rajesh drank a beer and I
had the best mango margarita ever. The food was truly delicious. As we were finishing dinner, a gay couple from New York City from the village chatted with us about what food we ate and what we had to drink and made so many comments about Lake George that really amused us.
The "joie de vivre" is palpable and contagious in this vibrant, culturally diverse and cosmopolitan city. Whether sipping a margarita at an outdoor café or exploring historic Old Montreal, you can't escape without experiencing the excitement and energy that pervades the entire city. The truly international flavor here is evident in the numerous fine restaurants and bars in the city that has lots of parks, fountains and music. Walking past rue due Prince Albert, we stumbled upon a park with a fountain and some street musicians who sang and played their instruments while young couples kissed and some danced around…Montreal truly has it all!!!
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