Interlude: Montreal

16 -18 October

More pictures from our trip to Montreal:

Rue Saint Denis at night on Thursday with Sean and Dale:



A stained glass studio on Rue Saint Denis:



On Friday Chris drove up from Boston via an overnight in Vermont. I told everyone I wanted to go up Mount Royal. They were good sports. Here's a statue in Jeanne-Mance Park at the foot of the mountain:



Mount Royal, in the middle of the city, is a park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. A nearly-paved road spirals up the mountain so gently you can't even tell you're climbing. Steep footpaths and stairways cut through but we stuck to the road. At the top is a chalet with a view of the city and the Saint Lawrence River, which surrounds Montreal.

Early on we came upon a woman who works at a local hospital and comes into the park daily to feed the birds. Here she is feeding shelled peanuts to chickadees. This series of pictures is of three different birds, or, at least, the same hungry bird three separate times:





Near the top we took pictures of this berry tree:



The view from the actual summit was about as good as the view from Bear Mountain a month ago:



But here's the view from the chalet:






We took the stairs back down:




We ended up somewhere different from where we'd started, finding ourselves on the outside of the McGill University campus. They do ivy here, but where we use English Ivy, this one likes Virginia Creeper:




We went to Old Montreal for lunch. Dale bought herself, me, and Chris light-up moose pens. I found a dreadlocked stuffed moose and a canvas tote bag (rather girly of me, but it has a moose on it).

Walking towards the river we had to cross some tracks:



Across the Saint Lawrence River is an amusement park (look under the bridge):



On Saturday we left Jack to do scholarly conference things. We had no specific plans except to walk up Rue Saint Denis and maybe see the contemporary art museum. As it happened we never got off Rue Saint Denis. Chris has furniture fantasies (there was art enough on sale), I'm lured in by anything handmade and shiny (too expensive to bring home, which is a good thing), and Dale bought a cloth bag embroidered with a rather frazzled looking penguin.

At lunch, an ode to Andy's bar tricks, with a charming package of peanut butter on the side:



Chris found another furniture store just off the main road. We found a cow:



Rue Saint Denis is filled with offbeat shops. Chris had to go into every furniture store. And she was determined to get her hair cut. Considering that we must've passed half a dozen hair salons in a mile, this was not a problem. While she was reinventing her look, the rest of us went to a coffee roaster and sat outside. For the record, it was not as good as Rojo's.

Here's the view from where I was sitting: Coffee, chocolate, and more coffee.



The sun started sinking behind the buildings and we started getting cold. We walked back to the hotel. Jack, Sean, and Dale went to the conference banquet. Chris and I stuffed ourselves with Ethiopian food at a restaurant on Rue Saint Denis.

So ended our last day in Montreal. The train ride home is another story.