Montreal:
We spent Sunday and Monday in Montreal and began our Globus tour of the historic cities of eastern Canada. Montreal has a nice feel to it. It’s older and more wealthy areas include many beautiful old buildings and cobbled streets. On Monday morning we visited the Notre-Dame Basilica, which is built of stone but is decorated with magnificent wood carvings that you would swear were made of stone.
One of the most memorable things about Montreal is the so called underground city. As Montreal can receive up to 4 metres of snow in winter there are 55 city buildings connected by an underground system of multi-level passages and shopping arcades. The system is linked to Central Station so that Metro commuters lucky enough to work in one of those buildings don’t have to step out in the snow to get to work. Good thinking! It is just like a great big Westfield Centre, but completely underground!!
Another memorable site is the stadium built for the 1976 Olympics.
Fifty-five per cent of people here speak French as their first language, so all signs are in French and only some are also in English. While we had been told to expect this it is strange, and rather exotic, to be in Canada rather than France but have everyone greet you with “bonjour” all the time.
The tour looks like it will be a lot of fun. Lisa, our tour director, is a very bright personality and extremely helpful. There are 42 people on the tour, including 10 Aussies. But as usual we have made friends with Americans first. Funny how that happens. We have teamed up with Chuck and Barb from Las Vegas and Al and Sandy from Michigan. We are all baby boomer world travellers so we have traded a lot of funny stories. We have found it strange having to ask for a fridge in most American/Canadian hotels. Some even try to charge you for them, but “no way Jose” is my mantra. So far it has worked, so we’ll see how it goes on this trip.
We spent Sunday and Monday in Montreal and began our Globus tour of the historic cities of eastern Canada. Montreal has a nice feel to it. It’s older and more wealthy areas include many beautiful old buildings and cobbled streets. On Monday morning we visited the Notre-Dame Basilica, which is built of stone but is decorated with magnificent wood carvings that you would swear were made of stone.
One of the most memorable things about Montreal is the so called underground city. As Montreal can receive up to 4 metres of snow in winter there are 55 city buildings connected by an underground system of multi-level passages and shopping arcades. The system is linked to Central Station so that Metro commuters lucky enough to work in one of those buildings don’t have to step out in the snow to get to work. Good thinking! It is just like a great big Westfield Centre, but completely underground!!
Another memorable site is the stadium built for the 1976 Olympics.
Fifty-five per cent of people here speak French as their first language, so all signs are in French and only some are also in English. While we had been told to expect this it is strange, and rather exotic, to be in Canada rather than France but have everyone greet you with “bonjour” all the time.
The tour looks like it will be a lot of fun. Lisa, our tour director, is a very bright personality and extremely helpful. There are 42 people on the tour, including 10 Aussies. But as usual we have made friends with Americans first. Funny how that happens. We have teamed up with Chuck and Barb from Las Vegas and Al and Sandy from Michigan. We are all baby boomer world travellers so we have traded a lot of funny stories. We have found it strange having to ask for a fridge in most American/Canadian hotels. Some even try to charge you for them, but “no way Jose” is my mantra. So far it has worked, so we’ll see how it goes on this trip.
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