What a great city! J’adore Montréal! What a beautiful, clean, safe, friendly, fun place. I can’t imagine I would want to go there in the winter (although there is an entire underground city—la ville souterraine—so you never actually need to emerge and can spend the winter living a mole-like existence, if need be), however, in August (Août), it is sunny and hot--I was surprised that it was in the 80s and 90s, but really quite nice. (The locals dislike the heat.)
Montreal is predominantly French-speaking, but almost everyone I encountered was bilingual. Still, a few bon jours, mercis, s’il vous plaîts, and parlez-vous anglaises go a long way. Most signage is also bilingual, although signs in the Metro (the excellent subway system) is all-French, but it’s pretty easy to figure out what it means. (Four years of high school French failed me; sure, I can read Jean-Paul Sartre but can’t order a meal in a restaurant.)
Blow-by-blow account (and pictures) after the jump.
I originally went up ostensibly for the annual Divers/Cite festival, but was actually ensorcelled by just about everything else in Montreal. And seeing an advert in the Metro for the Insectarium, and realizing that it was not my house, I knew there was one place I had to go.
I drove up Friday afternoon, a pleasant enough drive—a least once I got north of Lake George and summer traffic abated. Traffic was backed up at Customs for about an hour (nothing compared to the almost three-hour wait to get back into the U.S.); I’m glad I remembered to bring my passport, as I needed it.
I got to the hotel about 2:30 and immediately set out to explore, getting the lay of the land, where everything was, and figuring out the best way to get around (foot, actually, although the Metro came in handy when it was raining or my feet were killing me). I had dinner at a Belgian restaurant downtown called L’Actuel, which specialized in mussels, which were quite good, although the “crispy vegetables” they were served with primarily comprised celery, which was odd. Still, Belgian beer was on tap, and everything was served with “Belgian fries” which are basically french fries. (“French” fries are actually a Belgian invention and the word “french” refers to the method of serving them—that is, cut into thin strips, or what we call “julienne.” This of course renders that whole “freedom fries” nonsense a few years ago even stupider than it was on its face.)
At about 7:30 I wandered down to The Village (no, not where The Prisoner was filmed; that’s in a couple weeks...) for an outdoor “Sunset Party.” After about an hour, the skies opened, unleashing the most torrential rain I have ever seen. I had neglected to bring an umbrella, so I dashed for the nearest Metro station and availed myself of la ville souterraine and a pub I found therein until it abated. There was a TV on that was broadcasting local news and, attempting to translate the captions, I mistook the word for “pool” (piscine) with that for “fish” (poisson), rendering a story about a backyard accident far more surreal than it actually was...
Saturday morning, I was up early, and had a series of events planned, including a trip to the Musee des Beaux Arts and the Montreal Planetarium. I set out and a couple blocks from the hotel I stayed at was the Cathedrale-Basilique Marie-Reine-du-Monde (Mary Queen of the World Cathedral), an homage to St. Peter’s in Rome (though decidedly more modest). It was built from 1875 to 1894, construction delayed by the Bishop’s desire to build the cathedral in Anglophone (and Protestant) west Montreal, rather than Francophone east Montreal. Apparently, he had a grudge to bear. Still, it’s a pretty cool building.
Since nothing opened until 10:00, and I had two hours to kill, on a lark I decided to hike to the top of Mont Royal, the large hill that gave the city its name (Mont Réal). It was a 3,5-km hike to the top, and not especially arduous. It's a very popular jogging and biking trail, and I was surprised at how crowded it was, even at that early hour. There is an observation platform at the top, which affords an excellent view of the city:
I hiked back down and got to the Musee des Beaux Arts just after 10. There was a special exhibition called “streamlining,” or a comprehensive collection of examples of industrial design from the 1930s onward. While I can understand the basic point of the exhibit and it was actually interesting, it occurred to me that I was standing in a museum of fine arts looking at staplers, adding machines, and vacuum cleaners. This struck me as very amusing and I couldn’t help but start giggling uncontrollably. Plus in one room were some artifacts that I think I had growing up. I’m sorry, but things that I have actually owned should not be in a fine arts museum!After that, I wandered across the street to the second building--the museum exists in two parts, the original neo-classical building that opened in 1912:
and a new annex built in 1991 after the museum’s collection outgrew the original building-- where all the European art was housed. Some cool stuff, notably some great 19th-century still lifes (le nature morte) that feature crustaceans.I finished up there about noon and was really hungry, so I wandered down Rue Crescent, where all the restaurants and pubs were. Several blocks were closed off as apparently there was some major NASCAR event happening on Saturday and there was some kind of festival for it taking place. While eating lunch, I got to watch a “pit stop” contest whereby people raced to be the first to change a tire on a race car. Odd. But here was something that would surely make the Fox News crowd’s heads collectively explode: a NASCAR event conducted in French. Hah!
After lunch, I ambled down to the Planetarium, which is an excellent one. I’m always leery of planetaria, as they are often far too kiddie-oriented and everything is written for an average age of 8. However, I was pleased to discover that this was a planetarium for adults, with a few concessions to younger folks. All the placards were bilingual, so for fun I tried to see if I could understand the French version without “cheating” and looking at the English (didn’t do too badly). There was a show called “Le nouveau système solaire”--the English-language version (“The New Solar System”) showing at 2:30.
I had about an hour to kill, so I walked to nearby Vieux-Montreal, or “Old Montreal,” the spot where the city was originally founded in 1642. Needless to say, the architecture is all correspondingly old and quite beautiful and impressive, representative of a time before architects and designers started building structures with a contempt for humanity (e.g. New York's Penn Station). (I admit, I’m a neo-classical snob...) I thought this bank was quite impressive:
Heck, I’d bank there. Would that my Bank of America branch were as aesthetically pleasing. Also in Vieux-Montreal is the Basilique Notre-Dame, an immense cathedral built in 1824. Interestingly, it was designed by James O’Donnell, an Irish-American Protestant architect—yes, designing a Catholic cathedral (hey, a job’s a job, right?). Apparently, he was so moved by the experience that after the basilica was completed he converted to Catholicism. I don’t have any affinity whatsoever for Roman Catholicism but I do admit they certainly know how to build a church.
There was a wedding taking place, so I didn’t get to go inside (well, I could have, but it would have been rude). I wandered around Vieux-Montreal a bit, then ambled back to the Planetarium. The show on "The New Solar System” was quite excellent, comprising as it did an update on major astronomical events, discoveries, and clarifications of the past several years, focusing on the whole Pluto controversy. (I thought they gave the Cassini mission to Saturn short shrift, but who am I to complain?). They also gave a short presentation on that evening’s sky, for stargazers. Most notably, the International Space Station would be passing overhead between 21h30 (9:30—all times in Montreal are given using a 24-hour clock--confusing at first, but you learn to automatically subtract 12) and 23h (11:00) and would be the brightest object in the sky. (At that time, I was at an outdoor event and there was too much light pollution from the city to see much of anything in the sky, but I did see some bright object overhead in approximately the right place, so it may have been it.)After the planetarium show, it was about 4:00, and I was exhausted and my feet hurt, so I went back to the hotel and took a nap before heading out on the town. Quick question: what motivates people in hotels to constantly slam doors?!
Sunday morning, I had until noon to check out and discovering--quel horreur!--that the maid had neglected to replace my in-room coffee, I lurched across the street to Gare Centrale (Central Station) for coffee. Sufficiently caffeinated, I hopped on the Metro (it was 7 km, a bit too far of a walk given the time I had) to visit the Jardin Botanique (Botanical Garden) and the one thing I had been looking forward to all weekend: the Insectarium, which did not disappoint. The Diversity Room had pinned and mounted examples of insects from around the world, some freakishly huge. They also had live examples, such as giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches, large beetles, scarabs, stick insects of various lengths, and several scorpions and tarantulas (apparently, it is also an Arachnidarium as well as an Insectarium). On the upper level, a whole room was devoted to social insects, ants and bees, predominantly, although I did notice that one renegade had managed to escape the live ant exhibit. There is also a scale on which you can determine your weight in ants--mine happened to be 4,000,000, which I think I will put on my driver’s license when it comes up for renewal. I could have spent hours at the Insectarium, but I had scant time before checkout, and I did want to hit the road fairly early to beat traffic (didn’t happen).
Before heading back, I did wander through the Jardin Botanique and really did enjoy it (got lost a few times). It's divided into a number of different regions, such as the Chinese Garden, the Japanese Garden (yes, with Asian men and women standing in flower pots, for you Police Squad fans), an alpine garden, an ornamental vegetable garden, an “experimental garden” (where I expected to find Peter Graves and giant grasshoppers), and many many other things. Begun in 1931, the Jardin Botanique has well in excess of 20,000 varieties of plants. There are a variety of events that take place (like tea ceremonies in the Japanese Garden) but I only spent a mere 45 minutes there and saw only the smallest fraction of what there was to see. Should I return to Montreal (and I would love to) I shall have to make it a point to spend more time in the Jardin Botanique.
Headed out about noon and got stuck in the line for Customs for almost three hours. There were helicopters, officers with German shepherds walking between the rows of cars, my trunk was searched, they grilled me on where I was, what I did, what I do for a living--man, it felt like East Berlin. I was at least happy that my papers were in order.Still, I absolutely loved Montreal and would definitely like to go back and spend more time there.
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