Our plan for Tuesday was a city bus tour of Montreal, but the weather didn't cooperate so we had to go with a new plan, which was a "down day" as Marilyn calls them. It had rained most of the night and was still raining when we woke up. Weather lady Mazie reported that it was not supposed to quit until 10:00 p.m., so we all agreed to postpone our bus tour until tomorrow. So we had the morning to rest, catch up on chores, I even baked some cookies. By afternoon, Joe was ready to go for a drive, so the Johnsons and Froeschkes headed up the road to find a grocery store after stopping by the campground office and extending a day here. We passed a Costco, so we decided to make another stop there. However, the GPS picked out a different Costco for us, so we had to go a little further. But we got stocked up again, Mazie even found the Habitat soup she and Marilyn like so well, on sale for $1, so she bought several cans for her, and more for Marilyn. It stopped raining in the afternoon, and just had a few brief showers off and on the rest of the day, but we all enjoyed a day "off."
Wednesday we were up bright and early to head for Montreal. We opted for the double decker "hop on, hop off" tour, and we rode the entire route the first time, got off and had lunch, and rode it again, stopping this time at the sights we had selected.
Some of the places we didn't go back to were: Chinatown;
The Village (with the pink balloons) -- it also happened to be Gay Pride week, so that was being celebrated here in this section;
the Fine Arts Museum, where a very colorful tree sculpture of glass-blown limbs is on exhibit during the summer months. This sculpture is taken down every winter and put back together every spring for display outside in front of the museum.
One of the last stops on the bus ride was at the Parc Mont-Royal Park, which provided a great view of the city, including a view of the OlympicStadium built for the 1976 summer Olympics which were held here.
When we returned to the terminal after our first go-round, we had to exit the bus, and we walked over to a pub for lunch.
Montreal has a "
vast network of pedestrian walkways below the city" (which come in very handy during their harsh winters).
"There are 20 miles of connecting passageways beneath downtown, with the subway, commuter trains and buses also converging here. Approximately 500,000 people circulate daily on this network, where some 2,000 shops and restaurants, 10 major hotels, museums, theaters and universities can be found." Our bus narrator told us you could do absolutely everything in this underground city -- shop, eat, get a haircut, do your banking, pick up your drycleaning, go to work, etc. So we walked down to check it out.
Basically, it was like any other mall, except you couldn't see daylight. We didn't have time to really shop it, but it was interesting.
We got back on the bus, and the first stop we wanted to explore was the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal, another beautiful basilica.
"Built between 1824 and 1829, the magnificent interior in wood and the boldly modern design of the Notre-Dame-du-Sacre-Coeur Chapel, capitvate hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Paintings, sculptures and stained-glass windows illustrate biblical passages as well as 350 years of parish history." We took a guided tour here, and during our tour they were tuning the organ (all 7000 pipes), so we had the opportunity to learn some of the history of this very beautiful church.
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| ORGAN PIPES |
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| ALTAR |
Next door to this beautiful room was the "chapel" where they hold weekday services. While the basilica was very blue, the chapel was very gold, and the bronze statute behind the alter weighs 20 tons. There are 3 arches in the sculpture, and a dove and something else at the top, all representing Biblical passages.
Back on the bus, we passed a bust sculpture of John F. Kennedy. I don't know why they have a sculpture of him here, but they did.
Our last stop was another church, Saint-Joseph's Oratory, another "
minor basilica and national shrine . . . it is Canada's largest church." While not as opulent as the two other basilicas we have toured, this one was lovely too, and huge. "
The modern 3,000-seat church that resulted is still the largest church
in Canada, and its copper dome is one of the world’s largest."
You could walk all the way around the altar, and the area where you light candles for loved ones (I'm sure that has a name) was stair-stepped. That area was huge, and the candle holders were in different colors. There were so many burning that it made it hot in there.
The altar was pretty awesome too.
I think the church was 8 stories tall. We took the elevator up to 6, that was as far as we were allowed. There was a balcony on the church level with a great overlook of the church grounds as well as the city.
The gardens below were sculptured and manicured -- they looked like a carpet.
As we got off the bus, there was some flower bushes with beautiful blooming flowers -- I stopped to smell the roses, or whatever they were (they were not roses).
We drove back to camp, but our day wasn't over. In our brochures was a photo of the casino here, and it looked pretty grand, so Joe thought we should go check that out. (Casino-de-Montreal) It wasn't quite as grand as the photo, and we knew we had to see it at night to get the full benefit, but it was pretty nice, both inside and out. There were a series of different colored flags outside that added to the beauty. And he even won a little, enough to cover my $20 loss, and make $25 over. A successful trip!
We only stayed about an hour and got back to camp about 10:30, plenty late enough for us. Tomorrow is a travel day again, so it was past our bedtime.
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