Just like Samuel de Champlain, we navigated our way down (albeit on land) the St. Lawrence River on the back roads through countryside, small French-Canadian villages and farmland where the corn was more than knee-high around the 4th of July. We rode into the suburban towns along the banks of the river northeast of Montreal and then into the heart of Québec’s largest and most metropolitan city.
After weeks of deer, bald eagles, seals and whales, the skyscrapers, traffic, honking horns and clubs were a bit of a culture shock. We rolled in to the comfort of our hotel in the midst of the jungle of skyscrapers and set off almost immediately for Vieux Montreal (the old city) via Ste. Catherine’s Street and through China Town. We got an eyeful and pledged to return a different route.
When we came to Canada on our brief honeymoon, we stayed right in old Montreal. We returned to Place Jacques-Cartier to relive our one day here a bit and enjoy some snacks at Maggie Oakes with its excellent service (at least by our waitress) and good people watching. We returned via Rue Rene Levesque, an urban but much superior route.
Vieux Montreal
Montreal is on an island and built around a mountain, Mount Royal, from which its name is derived. Montreal hosted Canada’s first Olympics and only summer games in 1976. For Montreal’s 350th anniversary, the city of Berlin, Germany donated a portion of the infamous Berlin Wall to the city in 1992. Cirque de Soleil, the fantastical, acrobatic, colorful circus act you may have seen in Las Vegas or elsewhere is based in Montreal.
Montreal is also home to McGill University which was established in 1821. McGill is the educational home of 12 Nobel Laureates, 3 astronauts, 3 Canadian Prime Ministers, 9 Academy Award and 3 Pulitzer Prize winners and conferred Canada’s first medical degree. It was also at McGill that ice hockey was first played in 1845.
As a child when my family came, all I remember was that we went to La Ronde, the amusement park. Last time we were here, we visited the botanical gardens and having lived close by I’ve spent more than my share of time here going to the Casino, Canadiens and Expos games (before the ‘Spos, as my native of northern Vermont and Expos fan, college roommate would call them moved to Washington DC and became the Nationals) and the clubs and bars of Ste. Catherine’s.
This time, we took a walk up to and around the McGill campus and visited the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on a grey morning as the predictive clouds of the front edge of Hurricane Beryl remnants rolled in.
And as Beryl’s leavings arrived, we chose to stay hunkered down, catch up on some work and the blog and enjoy our down time in the comfort of our accommodations to stay out of the rain.
Sources:
The Traveling Ridleys 
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