Montreal, je t’aime

So my favourite store in Montreal is still open. I know for sure, because I checked. And bought a mask, which I collect. It’s good to keep track of these things.

Montreal is one of Canada’s great cities. Again, I know for sure, because I used to live there.

Which meant I didn’t have the same, well, needs, out of my visit there this week as I have for places I’ve not lived, where I’m running around trying to see all of the sights and soak up the ambience.

What I did instead was wander some of my favourite neighbourhoods, downtown, Old Montreal and the Plateau.

In the end, it turned out I walked about 18 kilometres. And I managed to eat at my favourite dessert place not once, but twice, in two different locations! Old Montreal is still beautiful, and absolutely filled with tourists. The Plateau is still a hip place to hang. And downtown is still a great place to shop.

It was also muggy beyond belief. So I like to think I sweated my desserts out. Plus all the other meals I ate yesterday were salads.

This morning it was raining. The kind of soak you in two minutes rain I remember from summer in Montreal, so at least I got to expect the weather I’m used to? Thankfully today’s plans involved going to the Biodome, which is my favourite Montreal attraction. It has a few different biomes on display, complete with animals that would inhabit that biome in nature. I’ve been mad for the Biodome since I went there when I was 15 when I attended Space Camp (did you notice “nerd” is right in my blog header?) and it was my favourite place to take people when they visited me in Montreal. So I went to the Biodome a lot. I really like animals and plants though. Also at least once they had lemurs.

Speaking of ring-tailed mammals, the tourists went mad for the racoons. I kid you not. They weren’t nearly as excited about the monkey in the tropical zone, but in the Laurentian forest area people were just nuts for the racoons, especially the one that was chilling out in a tree.

Actually all the animals in the Laurentian forest section were really active. The lynx really wanted to get at the birds it could hear. The beaver was swimming around like crazy. The otters were all over the place, including having a prolonged fight.

The sloths were also terrific. They were on a special exhibition and what appeared to be a young sloth even crawled out from where he was snuggly with the other sloth a few times, causing much excitement amongst us viewers.

Then I drove to Ottawa, where I spent the evening hanging with one of my best friends. I’m looking forward to checking out some of my favourite Ottawa spots over the next few days.