Mooching about in Montreal

After a night spent in the smallest twin room ever, Toni and I refuelled from the all you can eat if you really must continental breakfast bar (I shouldn't be sniffy, it's a Travelodge for god's sake) and strode out into the sunshine, heading for the old port and old town. It's a curious mix of tacky souvenir shops, more upmarket souvenir shops and some well-heeled boutiques - together with more art galleries than you can shake a paintbrush at. We didn't venture, bearing in mind the precarious weight of my suitcase and the fact that I don't have any spare walls at home - but I did buy some tiny moccasins for my new great nephew.

Toni and new friends in the Old Town

And me too

And then there's all the rusting industrial grunge on the waterfront, which we saw more than our fair share of as we stupidly followed a cycle path to Isle St Helene and the biosphere. We set off with such optimism, only to find we were forced below flyovers and alongside speeding traffic and a very large flour factory - not Montreal's most picturesque spot. Thankfully a friendly lady jogger came to our rescue as we despaired over our confusing map - she was running to the casino on the neighbouring island where she works,  and by heck that's a long way. The photo above shows the whacky dwellings known as Habitat 67 which were built for the Expo of 1967.

By the time we reached our destination after walking for the best part of 2 hours in over 30 degrees, we were ready to eat a horse and drink its trough, but we had to make do with salad, diet coke and plastic cutlery rather than the oasis we'd hoped for.

We didn't go into the biosphere on the island - to be honest we'd expected something with plants, not the equivalent of the science museum - and to be frank the area wasn't looking at its best as they were obviously packing up from some kind of festival on Sunday. So after lunch we hopped on the metro (why didn't we do that earlier???) and headed for the botanical gardens which are near the recently refurbished Olympic stadium. 

The gardens are probably the best I've seen, though if you ever visit be warned that it's $19, the signposting isn't great and they're not well-serviced with food and drink - I was craving ice cream in vain like a thing possessed - but the variety and setting is just fabulous. It rained a bit but didn't cool things down much - hot hot hot...

Old town for dinner - a really lovely restaurant called Les Pyrenees with fish and a decent veggie menu for Toni - hurrah! Waiters were great and I must recommend - is opposite the corner of Saint Paul Ouest and St Pierre. And I had Catalan orange cake with warm choc sauce and a liquer coffee with Kahlua and Cointreau so rolled back to the hotel very happy. The old town is lovely at night, beautifully lit and very, very much like Paris. We're right next to Chinatown here, with more grubby little restaurants than you can shake a chopstick at - shame neither of us like Chinese, but I'm not sure we'd take a chance anyway....