Montreal – Day 1

So here is our home for the week. We’re on the second floor, and yes, those are metal outdoor stairs leading up to our apartment. The stairs have rubber treads, but still I can only imagine how treacherous they are in the snow.

We’re staying at the intersection of several neighborhoods, one of which is Little Italy.

We first went to the Jean Talon market, but unfortunately, my phone was dead so I didn’t get any pictures. We bought some apple cider, apples, sausage, cheese, and bread, so we have something to snack on during the week.

After dropping our purchases at the apartment we catch the train into Old Montreal. We have two main objectives: the Notre-Dame Basilica and the Pointe-à-Callière Museum of Archaeology.

Old Montreal does indeed look very European:

 

There was a line for the Basilica, but it moved very quickly. We paid our tickets and got right in.

Can you see the gold halo of stars?

The details and the colors and the scale of everything is truly bonkers. Awe inspiring and overwhelming. One of the most beautiful human-created places I’ve ever been. Definitely worth the ticket price.

We wandered over to the archaeology museum next. Pointe-à-Callière was built on top of active digs, which means that those excavations are a part of the museum itself. Very cool concept and very cool presentation.

For some reason there was also a large exhibition of Egyptian mummies as well, which was not very thematically similar, but drew a large crowd.

First a small river, then an underground sewer, it’s now a strangely pretty exhibit

You can light a candle for some dead settlers

A signature of one of the leaders of the indigenous nations

Section of a wall under glass. You walk on top of it and are actually walking the dig site

A fire pit below your feet. Gives you a sense of how sites are jumbled up together

Cool stained glass

Cool Egyptian heads

 

After the museum we decided we were hungry and thirsty. We went to the Bistro-Brasserie Les Soeurs Grises, built on the site of an old convent. We got a boar & blueberry burger (had the consistency of a brat patty) and our first round of poutine. Joe made the good point that poutine is hard to screw up, but it’s also difficult to do extremely well. This version was fine. We also had some decent microbrews.

That was about it for Day 1. Most shops close around 5 here, so you’ve got to get any shopping done early. We got back on the train and headed home.