Montreal Part 1

After I had an epic sleep in after my nightmare day I dragged myself out of bed and went walking round Montreal.

I was a little weirded out at first as it was about minus seven degrees and there was snow ever where, and all the signage was in French. How ever minor, I was getting my first taste of culture shock, and a little climate shock as I have never been in a city covered in snow.



It was even snowing a little which was nice. I walked up the main drag of Montreal, Rue Sainte Catherine to look around. I then randomly wandered into the RESO, otherwise known as "The Underground City".

It is unreal, in the middle of the city pretty much all of the office buildings and malls are all underground and connected together. It is air conditioned so it's heated in winter when the streets are covered in snow, and cooled in summer when it reaches extreme temperatures of like 20 degrees.

It covers something like 12 square kilometres, connecting 60 buildings with 32 kilometres of tunnels connecting everything. You can also access seven of the metro stations from the underground city as well.

I also love the fact that they have a functioning metro system in the middle of the city, it makes getting round so quick and easy, as trains come every few minutes.

I then went into the tourism office where I got a rather handy map and the French Canadian woman circled a whole bunch of rad stuff to do round town. I got some groceries and went back to the hostel for dinner and a quiet one.

There I met a swiss german girl, Michaela who listened to my story about the nightmare day I had before, and we ended up catching a gig that night, up on the Plateau (plateau of Mont Royal) which is the arty part of town.

It was some random indy band from Florida called "Clock Hands Strangle" who were playing a small gig on a Monday night in Montreal for a $5 cover. I liked their set and I went to have a chat with the singer at the merch stand after their set. When the bloke heard I was an Aussie he gave me a free CD which was pretty rad.

The next morning there were blue sky's and awesome visibility, so I met Michaela and we decided to do the tourist thing and go up to the Olympic Stadium. It was very handy that I met her as well, as being Swiss they can speak German, French and English so that helped me get over the language barrier quickly.



The Olympic stadium was built for the 1976 Olympics, and I think is an awesome structure. It is also the largest inclined tower in the world, although it was a bit of an easy one because the only other inclined tower in the world is the leaning tower of Pisa.



We had unreal views of the city as well, it was about the first clear day for a while which was nice. The tour of the stadium was interesting as well. We also checked out the Quay and Old Montreal.

There were some awesome buildings down in Old Montreal, and a lot of history there.



I went and got some more food and that night made up some epic mash, which was good to get into me after having to eat out in Vancouver for a week.

Wednesday Michaela went off to Mont Tremblant for a few days to snowboard and I was off on my own again. It was rather quiet in the hostel I was staying in, I had my four bunk room to myself for three nights in a row which was nice. The only problem was that there was not that many people hanging round in the common area that you could team up with and go do things with.

I decided to go off on an epic walk around the Plateau and Mont Royal park it's self. I caught the Metro and then walked up Rue Mont Royal. There was ice and snow covering everything, and we were even getting some fresh snow. It was a little windy but I was warm enough.



There were mad people jogging on the snow and ice.



There were squirrels and stuff there as well.



There was some stairs to get to the top.



And when I got to the top I had an awesome view of the city.





The next day I went off on a big trip up to the markets where they had all kinds of good stuff. A bloke gave me some Oranges for half price because I was an Aussie who was able to spit out a very dodgy "Parle vouz Anglais" instead of just speaking English.

I also got some very nice corn fed chicken thighs for cheap, even if I had to bone and skin it.

It was Thursday night, so it was the Hostel pub crawl night. All of a sudden all these people who had been hiding in their rooms all came out and met so we could get our trashbag on. I think something like 15 people including my new Belgian room mate turned up.

We took the metro up to Sherbrooke station and then walk a few blocks over to the main pub and club strip, Boul Saint-Laurent. We went to a few awesome little bars above shops where they had all kinds of cheap booze, much cheaper than anywhere else I have been in Canada so far.

I after a while I ended up in a group with a Brazilian girl from , a Dutch girl, a girl from Vancouver and a bloke from Toronto. Most of them were uni students on a break.

After getting into some wonderfully cheap Sambuca shots and pints of beer. Eventually we ended up in some random club that was full to capacity, that was playing 50's rock 'n roll. The people in there were going mental, there was even some bloke swinging off the fire sprinklers. The dance floor was overflowing as well.

We ended up leaving there at about three in the morning and squeezing the five of us in a taxi to get back to the hostel. Thing is we were hungry so we went out looking for late night feed.

I wanted some of that glorious Montreal poutine so we went off and got some. I will dedicate a post to Poutine and how awesome it is.

We got home from getting Poutine at half past four in the morning, it was good.