The Lion Dance: Chinese Acrobats on the Place Jacques-Cartier

Vieux Montreal

On Sunday we did a self-guided walking tour of the Old Town.

Here we are at Brit and Chips. Guess what kind of cuisine they serve.*

*Answer: Thai

This is an inadvertent recreation of the cover of Gourmet magazine that sits fading in the window of Marche De La Villette:

We stumbled upon a Fernando Botero piece. They're fat up here too:

 Somehow I ended up on the wrong side of the horse:

Here are a couple of eroded characters who ring upper floors of the Lewis Building:

The second most dangerous restaurant in Montreal:

 

There were lots of tourists near the Old Port:

Here is one of them relaxing on a bench:

 

Montreal: Plateau Mont-Royal

On Saturday we hit the town. Expertly avoiding all bus tours, we had a walk around the trendy Mont-Royal neighborhood. Lunch was at Saint-Viateur Bagel Cafe where I obviously had something with salmon in it:

A stroll through Parc La Fontaine:

The most dangerous restaurant in town:

The Metro (subway) is pretty nice, but it doesn't have air conditioning like the NYC Subway does. This means the platforms are bearable since the train cars aren't filling the tunnels with hot exhaust, but you will definitely sweat on board if it's hot out. The trains run on rubber wheels instead of steel so there is a noticeable lack of screeching.

Downtown by night:

Montreal: Amtrak

On Friday we hopped on the Amtrak train to Montreal at 8:15 in the morning in Penn Station New York. There was some ticket confusion that had to be cleared up with the agent but we managed to get on board with 15 minutes to spare. The trip was even longer than expected, a total of 13 hours. The scenery was pretty nice but it was very cloudy and rainy so hopefully we'll see more of it on the way back.

Here's Hilary either A) reading about Quebecois history or B) playing a game involving a bouncing penguin*:

Our only source of food:

q :ɹәʍsuɐ*