Vacation 2013-Last Day in Montréal

OK, right back to the vacation posts!  On our last day in Montréal, we covered a lot of territory.  Needless to say, we got lots of use out of our 3-day transit passes!

These two were right at home riding the subway by this point in the trip.

We started the day by heading back up to the Olympic park area so we could use our tickets for the Biodôme.  This building was the vélodrome (indoor cycling arena) for the 1976 Olympics.  It has since been remodeled into a very nice biodome, complete with 5 different ecosystems.

We started out in the rainforest.  It's a good thing the tour starts there, because it is brutally hot and humid!  All of the other ecosystems felt nice and cool after this one.  It was worth the discomfort, though, because we got to see a lot of great animals.

The brightly colored macaws were gorgeous.

Bat ears!!

We loved seeing the puffins in the polar exhibit.

Who doesn't love penguins??

Phone booths at the Biodôme.  We were amazed at how many functioning pay phones still exist in Montréal.

Loved seeing these license plates everywhere!

After the Biodôme, we took the subway to the center of the city to walk around in the Plateau, a neighborhood at the base of Mont-Royal.

Cool architecture along the Square Saint-Louis.

It started raining, so we ducked into a café for lunch.  Once again, the offerings were much healthier than the average lunch joint in the US.  We each had a panini sandwich (with lots of great veggies), and we shared a bowl of veggies and a big bowl of couscous salad.  Yum!

This picture just has to make you smile.

Enjoying our café lunch.

After lunch, we walked along the Boulevard Saint-Laurent.  We did some shopping, and then caught a bus to Mont-Royal (a small mountain in the middle of the city) so we could go visit St. Joseph's Oratory.

We won't let the rain ruin our trip to the Oratory!

A view from the steps looking up at the building.

 The oratory was huge, and it was beautiful, but it was hard to get good interior photos.

On our way out, the sun came back out!

Next, we took the subway again, this time to Vieux Montréal, the city's old port area.  We headed to the Basilica of Notre Dame to get tickets for that evening's sound and light show inside the church.

Notre Dame Basilica.

Before the show, we headed to another area café for dinner.  We were pretty much the only customers in the place at that time of the day, so we were able to have a nice chat with our waitress and learn more about how the Canadians teach their children to be bilingual.  It turns out that kids in Québec start learning English at about Laura's age, and the kids in the other provinces start learning French at this age.  Though most of the Canadians I've talked to admit it's hard to feel truly bilingual without having lots of opportunities to speak the second language, all of the people we encountered in the service sector in Montréal spoke impeccable English.  But there is no doubt that in this province, French is the primary language.

Why is Nathan always so happy to eat??!

It was sad to wind down our Montréal adventures.  It is such a great city, and we only scratched the surface of all there is to see and do, but I guess that just gives us a reason to go back sometime.  The next morning, it would be time to set off to the amazing city of Québec.  More to come soon!

Gina