Our UK watch said three thirty when we went to bed, and we were awake again at six thirty feeling relatively refreshed. This felt rather weird, but this was because the wake-up was local Montreal time and there is a five hour time difference, so really we went to bed at ten thirty.
As we are not meeting up with the family until four thirty-ish, and we do not have to check out of the hotel until noon, we had a leisurely morning. Watched the local news and weather on TV, and then sauntered down to have breakfast - two ‘continentals’ comprising fruit, yogurt, orange juice, toast and tea. We noticed that the hotel had a quite pleasant looking garden, but upon enquiring how we would get out there we were told that under normal circumstances that wouldn’t be a problem, but… at this point in time some company had hired out the first two floors of the hotel and exclusive use of the garden. As an alternative we wander outside the front of the hotel and across to the car park, which overlooks the airport runways. Surprisingly, between blocks of car parking bays were patches of grassland, and we spotted these
Branched Century, Centaurium pulchellum;
Annual Ragweed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia;
Horseweed, Erigeron canadensis; and
White Sweet Clover, Melilotus albus.
There was also a blue butterfly using this resource, not sure of species though.
Not many planes taking off so the novelty of wandering about the car park looking at the flowers soon wore off.
Back in the hotel we pack up and prepare to ship out on the eleven o’ clock shuttle bus back to the airport, to catch a bus into Montreal. Although we are about five minutes early for the shuttle, it is already there and we start chatting with the driver while he is waiting to see if anyone else wants the bus too. The usual start off question - from the driver - where are you from? Of course, we had the often visited discussion on being Welsh as opposed to English. The driver cheerily says “so you were colonised and oppressed by the English too” - there is a lot of laughter at this point. He was originally from Guyana, but came to Canada with his father when he was fourteen. His mother still lives in Guyana and he visits often. He did tell us a very good pub quiz trivia question, which was “ which is the only South American country that has English as it’s national language” - the answer was, of course, Guyana ( formerly known as British Guyana). He also told us that although it is in South America, the South Americans do not consider it to be part of South America, but rather that it forms part of the Caribbean nations.
Back at the airport we buy a day travel pass and set off towards Montreal, or more accurately, Lionel Groulx metro station, with intention of catching another metro line out to our accommodation. The journey is quicker than we expected and we are too early to go straight to the accommodation.
Riding the 727
Might as well go and have a look around the city. Back on the metro we have not quite mastered using the travel card resulting in one of us being on different sides of the ticket barrier, but having used both tickets. Luckily a man takes pity on us and lets the one on the wrong side of the barrier through. He also advises us on which train to catch and where to get off, still trailing a single case behind us. As luck would have it there was a shopping mall at the stop where we got off that just happened to have a facility for leaving luggage there, and at no cost either. The mall is part of ‘underground Montreal’ - the are over twenty two kilometres of underground passages linking parts of Montreal - it’s a way of getting about in the city in the winter when the snow is deep. A friend had already mentioned this to us.
Feeling a lot lighter without the cases we strolled along the main streets, admiring the cathedral
and statues plus fountains in Phillips Square.
Sit for a while watching the world go by and the flags fluttering on the Hudson Bay Company building.
Now for something to eat. Lots of lovely fresh fruit and other healthy food for take out lunches, but we opted for Lebanese cuisine, and very good it was too, accompanied by fresh mango juice.
Time to retrieve the suitcases and make our way to the orange line metro. Down lots of steps and escalators and jump on the train to Villa Maria. Just a short walk to the accommodation, which is a basement flat in a fairly quiet part of town. The rest of the holidaying family arrive and we have an evening catching up with what they’ve been doing so far.