Wednesday 17 August 2022.

Awake early this morning, well with a small child in the house what can you expect!

Today’s itinerary involves a day out in the Olympic Park area. The Biodome, The Botanic Gardens and The Insectarium are the planned events.  It is an easy ride on the metro, with only one change. Montreal hosted The Olympics in 1976 and some parts of the site were undergoing regeneration, consequently the route to our first stop, the Biodome was a bit convoluted but we arrive in time for our pre-booked ticketed entry. This attraction includes four different habitat zones, a tropical rainforest area, a Laurentian maple forest, representation the Gulf of St Lawrence and sub-polar regions representing the Labrador Coast and sub-Antarctic islands.  We enter the tropical zone first, and boy is it hot and humid.

What’s that Eric?  An Alligator or a Crocodile?

A tamarind monkey? (There appeared to be no interpretation around so we were never quite sure exactly what we were looking at!)

And some Capybaras?

Too hot to stay in here for long so it’s off to the Gulf of St Lawrence

The diver cleaning the viewing glass caused as much entertainment as the fish we also had a not so usual view of the underside of some ducks.

The next stop was visiting the penguins and other fauna in the sub polar regions, followed by the maple forest but, shame on us, we didn’t take any photos of either biome.

Leaving the Biodome we admire the Olympic Park’s iconic building - the Tower - it’s the tallest inclined tower in the world - designed by French architect Roger Taillibert. 

Apparently you are supposed to be able to take a funicular railway car to the top.  Looks like it’s not open today. Wander along the ‘Esplanade’, an urban park of nine platforms with good views over the Olympic Park,  to the Botanic Gardens.  Time for some lunch - the location for lunch is very pleasant but lunch choices are limited. We have a pre-booked entry for the Insectarium later and time is running on. Consequently we do not have time to give the Botanic Gardens the attention they deserve. Some very scenic fountains and flowers though.

Once tickets are checked the entrance into the Insectarium was through a winding cave like tunnel, with lights at sufficient intervals for it to not be too scary, but still made it atmospheric. There were various interactive chambers along the route. These demonstrated some aspect of an insects life in novel ways.  Some little cubby holes to climb into, so you could experience what it would be like.  There was also a wall representing what you would look like through insect eyes - you could stand in front of it and wave your arms about to see what you would look like to an insect. The next section had lots of insects to look at, like hissing cockroaches, giant millipedes, stick insects and the like. The little one loved all of this.  There was also a room with a whole array of museum pinned insect cases and the colours, sizes and sheer variety of butterflies, stick insects and beetles was amazing. 

                                                       Jewel beetles

Couldn’t quite believe the butterfly on LHS in the case - the one with the tiny wings and incredibly long body.

We then wandered into the zone with the butterflies flying around you, some of them were ginormous,  plus other insects doing their thing, but not in glass boxes.  Like these ants following each other in line across the ‘branch’ all carrying pieces of leaves. 

Outside there was a miniature ‘art installation’ with various insects doing very human like things, like this beetle having a bath.

The garden are was very pretty too. Eric liked the representation of prairie with the sea of Rudbekia

We think that perhaps the ‘museum’ is the best so far today. 

It’s been a very long day today but very enjoyable.