{"id":243,"date":"2005-07-30T06:47:28","date_gmt":"2005-07-30T14:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/songoose.com\/?p=47"},"modified":"2025-07-22T18:38:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T18:38:00","slug":"montreal-quebec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/?p=243","title":{"rendered":"Montr\u00e9al, Quebec"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just returned from a 5-day trip to Montr\u00e9al. The wife and I got a really great deal on air\/hotel and stayed at the posh <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Queen_Elizabeth_Hotel\">Fairmont Queen Elizabeth<\/a>. Please enjoy these random observations and accept my recommendation of this city as a wonderful place to visit.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Local flavor was interesting. I like pistachios, and was pleased to see that Montr\u00e9al also seems to like pistachios. At the many <em>cremeries<\/em> (ice-cream shops) I noticed that pistachio was almost always included, a rarity in my area. Of course, <em>cr\u00eapes<\/em> were also widely available both as fast-food and on the menus of more upscale places. While we were at La Ronde, we noticed a woman and her 2-year old eating some french fry concoction I had never seen before and she informed me that it was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cyberscriptus.org\/cyber34\/poutine.html\">fries topped with cheese curd and brown gravy<\/a> (perhaps a distant cousin to the incomprable <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uknet.com\/gallery\/BritishFood\/DSC01213\">chips, mushypeas and gravy<\/a> I had experienced in Northwest England). She informed us enthusiastically &#8220;this is a Quebecois meal!&#8221; <!--more-->There are an abundance of lovely sidewalk caf\u00e9s, coffee-shops (most omnipresent were Second Cup and Houton locations) and also Italian restaurants for some reason. On <a href=\"http:\/\/www.go-montreal.com\/areas_crescent_resto.htm\">Crescent Street<\/a> there is a lot of bars &#038; restaurants &#8211; most could find <em>something<\/em> to suit their fancy there.  Sadly, it weasn&#8217;t until our last day that we found an all-veg buffet called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commensal.com\/live_english\/index_fr.asp\">La Commensal<\/a> that was delicious, fresh and wholesome.<\/li>\n<li>Montr\u00e9al is ostensibly French-speaking but is really bilingual. I noticed that the deeper one goes into Montr\u00e9al (literally, from the surface down), the less English one sees. On the surface, almost everything is French\/English. In the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Underground_city_%28Montreal%29\">underground city<\/a>, much more French only. In the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Montreal_Metro\">Metro<\/a>, all French. Regardless, everyone we spoke with was bilingual so it hardly mattered. I eavesdropped on two middle-aged, professionally dressed women having Indian food one night and their conversation seamlessly flowed between the two languages. I wasn&#8217;t sure if they were practicing or felt that some topics were better in French and some in English. Perhaps they were trying to conceal their admiration my gigantic head.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Six_Flags_La_Ronde\">La Ronde<\/a>,  the amusement park across the river from Montr\u00e9al was a lot of fun but made me realize how spoiled I am by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hersheypark\">Hersheypark<\/a>.  The two parks are actually very similar, boasting a similar mix of rides and very similar themes (both have medieval and western-themed sections that appeared to have been built in the same period), but Hershey&#8217;s rides are just bigger, and with recent additions, there are more of them. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, we had a blast, but we kept saying &#8220;ohhh, this is just like the {insert ride here} at Hershey &#8230; but smaller.&#8221; Their double-track wooden coaster, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ultimaterollercoaster.com\/coasters\/yellowpages\/coasters\/monstre_laronde.shtml\">Le Monstre<\/a> was a great ride &#8211; fast but very smooth and one bank was so deep I was sure the train was going to jump the track.<\/li>\n<li>We visited the <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca\/biodome\/site\/site.php?langue=en\">Montr\u00e9al Biodome<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca\/biodome\/site\/gabarit.php?dossier=visite&#038;page=mvc&#038;menu=mvc\">virtual tour<\/a>) one day and it was well worth the trip (and the long wait in line though if I were to go again I&#8217;d buy tickets in advance). Not a huge fan of zoos, I was curious how this exhibit that differentiates itself from zoos in its marketing would do so in fact. Clearly, a lot of time and energy had been expended to provide a realistic facsimile of the animals&#8217; habitats. The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Capybara\">Capybaras<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lion_tamarin\">Lion Tamarins<\/a>,  Mackaws &#038; Parrots, Tropical Frogs, Porcupines  and Otters were all incredible. However, the Beavers, Puffins, and Penguins made the Biodome something really special. There was a room where you could view the underwater habitat of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Beaver\">Beaver<\/a> and actually watch them gnaw through branches and swim &#8211; they&#8217;re utterly graceful underwater and it&#8217;s amazing how quickly they can cut through a substantial branch. The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Puffin\">Puffins<\/a>&#8216; underwater habitat could also be viewed and watching these excitable birds &#8216;fly&#8217; underwater is a rare treat. Their wings are adapted for swimming and they make astoundingly fast curves, dives and ascents. The Penguin habitat was a bit small for my liking (for so many penguins) but seeing <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emperor_Penguin\">Emperor Penguins<\/a> in real-life was shocking in that I always imagined Penguins were about a foot and a half tall, not <strong>4 feet<\/strong> tall. Their markings are striking and feathers iridescent.\n<\/li>\n<li>The aforementioned <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Underground_city_%28Montreal%29\">underground city<\/a> is just incredible. It tickled the part of me that&#8217;s still adventuring with the Hardy Boys &#8211; blocks upon blocks upon blocks of upscale malls, metro stations, restaurants, downscale services &#038; shops all underground in a labyrinth of tunnels. I have rarely felt so proud as the evening when I found our way back to the hotel through 8 or 10 blocks of subterranean shopping when it was raining outside. A marvelous idea and we later discovered that there was much to explore that hadn&#8217;t yet made it onto our map. The whole thing was like opening a secret door in the back of your bedroom to find not just a passage, but a passage with people, and food, and &#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just returned from a 5-day trip to Montr\u00e9al. The wife and I got a really great deal on air\/hotel and stayed at the posh Fairmont Queen Elizabeth. Please enjoy these random observations and accept my recommendation of this city as a wonderful place to visit. Local flavor was interesting. I like pistachios, and was pleased [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}