day 10

This was my first multi-night stay for the sole purpose of visiting a city.  I had never been to Montreal, QC, but had heard many good things about it.  My friend Julien, with whom I play hockey, grew up here and gave me some suggestions about what to see and do.  I didn’t want to ride my motorcycle into the city, so I decided to just ride to the Metro (subway) stop, Longueuil-Université de Sherbrooke,  which is on the opposite side of the St. Lawrence river from Montreal, and take that into the city.  There were some brief showers on the way to the Metro stop and I ended up missing the exit due to traffic (and not being able to correlate the horrible GPS pronunciation of French street names to actual streets).  Eventually I was able to get to the Metro and be on my may to the island of Montreal.

Although the Metro makes stops at many of the places I wanted to see, I prefer to just walk and explore everything between the highlights.  Normally aLex and I do this together, either in Chicago or in places we are visiting, so it was different (not as fun) doing this by myself.

The most interesting part was Old Montreal, with it’s narrow cobblestone streets (and narrower alleys) lined with buildings dating back to the 1800s, including the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montréal, the Montreal City Hall, and many others.

In the afternoon, I had hoped to climb to the top of Mount Royal to get a good view of the city; however, there were severe thunderstorms on the way, and I didn’t want to be caught in them, nor be riding back on the motorcycle in them, so I ended my visit early.  aLex and I will have to come back another time to explore the city further.