October 21, 2015
Day 92: Montreal
We have "often" stopped at Montreal as part of a tour, and have given quite good coverage (we think) to the most important "tour"-ist things here. Naturally what is presented as most important is just our own demented view, and usually focusses on things like bagels and smoked meat!
This time, in the airport, I picked up the official tourist guide, and was interested to see what officially should be on the agenda. Since this is not Europe, there is not the same scope for a list of 60 or so castles, churches, walls, or suchlike. But to be fair, Montreal does have three at least cathedrals, and an old town. These are the kind of thngs we like to look at in Europe, so why not here?
So we have planned a tour of Old Montreal for tomorrow. We also have queued up the largest farmers' market and a special lantern festival at the Botanical Gardens for two other days. For today, though, we just did a walk to Maison des Cyclists and Lafontaine Park.
Maison des Cyclistes is the local headquarters of Velo Quebec, the organisation behind the great network of cycle routes in Quebec. We always stop there, partly because they have a cafe, and mostly to look at their selection of cycling guide books. This time around we were pleased to see that the wonderful "La Route Verte du Quebec" (also in English as Cycling in Quebec), the official guide to the cycle routes, has been joined by some others. These are from the same source and seem to be forming a family of guides. The one called "Les Voies Cyclables au Quebec" seemed very interesting. This covers the inter-city routes in a little less detail and the within city routes in more detail. There was also "LÉchapee Belle" (the beautiful escape) and "Randonees de Reve" (dream trips), and a mountain bike trail guide, at least.
These new guides for Quebec cycling are a very encouraging development, and signal further maturation of what really is the only decent cycling region in the country.
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From Maison des Cyclistes we went into the adjacent Lafontaine Park. This is the third or fourth largest park in the urban area, and contains some lovely little lakes, good for a Fall photo. This time we encountered a bit of excitement going on, in what turned out to be a shoot for some ABC TV network drama. There were people in reflective vests around, trying to keep the cycle path clear for bikes despite the moderate number of people milling about. We thought it was fun to look at the professional cameras, and the uncomfortable looking extras waiting for the scene to be shot. Dodie insightfully noticed that one lady with a baby in a stroller actually was an actor, since the baby was a doll.
Well fine, no big deal, and not really "bloggable", but I still reflexively snapped a couple of shots of the scene. This is when one of the people in vests approached and told me no photos. Readers of this blog will probably guess that that does not fly with me, at all . So I told the person as much, reminding them that this is Canada (land of freedom, and now, a newly elected Liberal government) and that we were in a public park. Needless to say, neither party convinced the other. Here are the disputed photos:
All we have to present for today beyond that are some grandparently shots of the kids. Tomorrow we will work on repacking the bikes into suitcases, ready for the inevitable final flight home, and we will (as advertised) check out Old Montreal. We will have to admit soon, though, that it is time to shut down this account, go home, and start planning the next one!
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