Back in August, James and I had thought about taking a trip while the kids visited my parents for their Camp OmaPapa week. As much as it pained us, we decided that the budget didn't allow it and that we should stay home. Happily enough, James needed to make a business trip to Montreal this fall. Since that was one of the possible destinations in August and the trip cost was now greatly reduced, we decided to go for it. My parents came up late on Tuesday night and James and I left after the bus on Wednesday morning.
Even despite a layover in Philadelphia (sometimes a black hole of airline travel), we made it Montreal on time Wednesday evening. I'm usually on top of the travel planning, often down to ridiculous details. Not so much this time...I had managed to check out and skim through two travel books from the library, but that was about as far as I got. So, when we got off the plane in Montreal, I had no idea where we were going...not what hotel, and not how to get there! James knew which hotel, and was fairly confident how to find the shuttle. Thankfully, it worked, and we made our way to our lodging for the night.
Since he had meetings on Thursday, he was staying at the airport hotel. Like most airport hotels, it's surrounded by a vast expanse of rail yards, parking lots, and other hotels. When we starting looking for dinner that night, we found a TripAdvisor recommendation for a place about 3/4 mile away. We walked, and almost walked right past it because it's closed for renovation. We reversed course, heading toward a mall thinking that certainly there would be more options there. Not really - a Ponderosa-type steakhouse (which my stomach couldn't face) and a completely closed (at 6 pm) food court. We tried to be adventurous, but ended up back at the hotel restaurant.
The next day, James was off to work and I was off to explore on my own. This is a completely different experience with modern technology: Google maps and directions and TripAdvisor on my phone and my Kindle for reading. I had no cell phone service, since I didn't want to pay the international calling rates, but I had no trouble finding wifi almost everywhere. Traveling by myself is unique, because I don't have to have an itinerary, or really any purpose to my wanderings.
I started the day by sending a Google Talk message to my mom and to James with my general plan: head toward Atwater Market and then stroll on the LaChine Canal trail toward downtown. (Seemed like it'd be good for someone to know where I was headed!) The front desk wanted me to take their shuttle to the airport and then a $9 bus to some point downtown, and THEN get on the metro to the market. Google maps, trusty in this case, directed me a couple blocks to a bus station, where an express bus would take me directly to a station only a few blocks from the market. Yes, please!
The market was just opening up when I arrived, so I walked past and over the canal into a residential neighborhood. The housing here was unique in that there seemed to be a ground floor with two apartments, and then a spiral staircase to a second floor landing with four doors, presumably entrances for two 2nd level and 3rd level apartments. It wasn't just one building like this either; I easily walked 8 square blocks of various iterations of the same basic layout. This isn't a great picture, but I always feel funny pulling out the big camera to take a picture of someone else's home...
Since he had meetings on Thursday, he was staying at the airport hotel. Like most airport hotels, it's surrounded by a vast expanse of rail yards, parking lots, and other hotels. When we starting looking for dinner that night, we found a TripAdvisor recommendation for a place about 3/4 mile away. We walked, and almost walked right past it because it's closed for renovation. We reversed course, heading toward a mall thinking that certainly there would be more options there. Not really - a Ponderosa-type steakhouse (which my stomach couldn't face) and a completely closed (at 6 pm) food court. We tried to be adventurous, but ended up back at the hotel restaurant.
The next day, James was off to work and I was off to explore on my own. This is a completely different experience with modern technology: Google maps and directions and TripAdvisor on my phone and my Kindle for reading. I had no cell phone service, since I didn't want to pay the international calling rates, but I had no trouble finding wifi almost everywhere. Traveling by myself is unique, because I don't have to have an itinerary, or really any purpose to my wanderings.
I started the day by sending a Google Talk message to my mom and to James with my general plan: head toward Atwater Market and then stroll on the LaChine Canal trail toward downtown. (Seemed like it'd be good for someone to know where I was headed!) The front desk wanted me to take their shuttle to the airport and then a $9 bus to some point downtown, and THEN get on the metro to the market. Google maps, trusty in this case, directed me a couple blocks to a bus station, where an express bus would take me directly to a station only a few blocks from the market. Yes, please!
The market was just opening up when I arrived, so I walked past and over the canal into a residential neighborhood. The housing here was unique in that there seemed to be a ground floor with two apartments, and then a spiral staircase to a second floor landing with four doors, presumably entrances for two 2nd level and 3rd level apartments. It wasn't just one building like this either; I easily walked 8 square blocks of various iterations of the same basic layout. This isn't a great picture, but I always feel funny pulling out the big camera to take a picture of someone else's home...
I was never too concerned about getting lost, because I could always find my way back with the Atwater Market tower as my landmark:
The market wasn't huge, but it was overflowing with fall colors. It took a lot of willpower not to buy some of the gorgeous mums:
And even more not to snatch up these ENORMOUS bags of apples for only $6! Think of all the applesauce and apple crisp!
I did weaken and buy a basket of berries from this stand, and some fresh roasted almonds around the corner.
After I'd made my rounds at the market, I headed back to the canal trail and toward downtown. I was (am) stumped by this ... whatever it is. I've tried googling a variety of terms to try to figure out what it is, with no luck. The design in the asphalt exactly matches the scribble on the sign. What could it be?
So far, the city reminded me a lot of Seattle. The market, the canal, and the locks were all things we'd explored there.
Once you get downtown, it's an unmistakeably old and French city. I was expecting some French, but wasn't really anticipating to be completely immersed in it. Occasionally, I would drop a BonJour and be greeted with a barrage of rapid fire French in response. Almost everyone spoke English and most greeted me in English. I actually spent a fair amount of time studying other people to try to determine what made it so obvious that I was Anglo!
The building on the left below is the Edmonston-Allen building. It's a nice looking old building, but I thought it was particularly interesting that the Allen company's steamship (Virginian) was the one that picked up the distress call from the Titanic and wired it building.
This strange looking structure is called Habitat 67. Constructed for Expo '67, it's made of prefabricated concrete "blocks" arranged to make separate residences. It was supposed to show a new way that people could live in crowded metropolitan areas.
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