The Carters visit Montreal

Since last weekend was a four day holiday, we decided to spend part of it visiting the city of Montreal, about 3 hours drive from Kingston. Making our way there early on Sunday morning, we quickly located our hotel before setting off to explore Old Montreal. This city is quite historic, having been settled by the French not long after Jacques Cartier sailed up the St Lawrence River to visit the area in 1535. The city saw its first permanent Europeans in 1642 and quickly established itself as a fur trading centre. Consequently, the old City of Montreal is very historic, and, like Quebec City, has a distinctly 17th century European feel to it. Having said this however, we found a unique blend of modern archtectural styles within the downtown area.

We walked around old Montreal for several hours on Sunday afternoon. Despite the frigid conditions, we enjoyed a fiesty performance by a fire juggler. The kids enjoyed this immensely and Nick was given a balloon poodle. After this, we explored the many souvineer shops found in the area. I finally succombed and pourchased my very own Canadian Toque. Mind you, this was a very handy way of helping to defeat the cold.

Mass for Easter Sunday was at the Notre Dame Basilica at 5.00pm. We made our way into the cathedral grateful for the warmth it provided. The interior of this vast building is amazingly gothic in its space and style! We enjoyed the service - totally in French - even if we didn't really completely understand what was being said.

We followed this vist with dinner at at three hundred year old pub before going back to our hotel. Unfortunately, the toilet in our bathroom flooded and water spilled over onto the carpet in the room. After frantically calling room service we were evacuated and resettled into a new room. This caused no end of amusement amongst the children.

The next day, we drove up to the Mont Royal Park lookout to take in some vistas of the city before visiting the site of the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games. Whilst here, we took the kids to the Biodome. This is a dome shaped construction housing a variety of ecosystems. We were able to walk through this and observe the various ecosystems at work. Nick really enjoyed the penguins and I've got to admit, they were pretty entertaining.

We enjoyed our visit to this city and really, in two days, only acquired a small taste. Bring on the summer so that we have time to explore at our leisure!