Montréal - the old and the new

We spent a morning driving ~250km from Quebec to Montréal. We planned a scenic route along the river taking up the full day, but the weather was so bad and so threatening that we took the most direct route, on the Trans-Canada Route 20. Another storm warning applied, and most of the way, we had poor visibility and snow-willies blowing over the road surface. By the time we got to Montréal, about noon, snow as falling quite heavily, and we were ploughing through 100mm of fresh snow and accumulated clods on inner-city streets. Our Jeep is a good vehicle for these conditions.

Near white-out on Trans-Canada Route 20 into Montreal.

Salting and ploughing furiously during heavy snowfall in central Montreal.

We encountered this weather even though the storm was meant to pass mostly to our south. By the time we looked at a TV, we saw that places we had been (some of which were pretty-well snow free when we were there) had been clobbered by incredible falls and parts were under a state of emergency. As pretty as it would have been, it was good to have escaped the full force of that tempest!

Lonely pedestrian in Victoria Square in downtown Montreal.

Montréal is a large city on a large island in the St Lawrence River. It is named after Mont-Royal in the heart of the city. It is the world's second largest French speaking city. While signs are all in French, we found that almost every conversation we overhead where we went was English. This city is a major global business centre, and it seems that Montréal is much more bilingual than elsewhere in Quebec.

Our hotel was on the edge of the old city in Rue St-Antoine, and we spent most of our visit walking in that part of town and also in the modern shopping district. Montréal also has an extensive 'underground city' which was good to explore to escape the bitter cold for a while. Yelp guided us to an excellent cafe just behind our hotel, and we got quite friendly with the proprietor during our short stay in Montréal.

As with everywhere we have travelled, some of the grandest buildings are churches and cathedrals. Most notable in Montréal is the Notre Dame Basilica but we were also impressed with the Christ Church Cathedral, which was, in fact, much more welcoming of visitors.

Notre Dame Basilica as viewed across Place D'Armes.

The main street of the old town is Rue Saint-Paul which is a narrow one-way road packed with restaurants and very beautiful galleries. One night we ate here at Modavie, a very nice Italian bistro where we enjoyed possibly the finest meal on this whole trip so far. It's at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Laurent, and we had sussed it out during our walk earlier in the day.

The delightful Rue St-Paul in Montreal's old town.

The old town's finest commercial building is the Marché Bonsecours. It's been a market since 1847, and prior to that, we read, this site had a theatre where Charles Dickens performed. We retreated in here for respite from the cold, which was a mistake because we bought a souvenir there. Next door was a stunning, we thought, old building now a museum.

We think this may be Montreal's most stunning building, now a museum dedicated to the life of a Catholic Sainte from Montreal, approx. 1653.

Between the old town and the St Lawrence is a reinvented old port region. The frozen Bonsecours Basin had been converted to a large ice-rink and skating track for the winter. It's not artificially cooled, and we noticed an inspector checking the solidity of the ice in places. It wouldn't do to have patrons fall into the river. This skating facility was the most sophisticated we have seen.

We could see that the De Horloge Pier area is very popular with joggers.

Skaters at Bonsecours Basin.

Montreal's Chinatown has a quaint pedestrian mall along Rue de la Gauchetiere.

In the modern part of town, the main shopping strip seems to be Rue Ste-Catherine which we walked along for some distance having got there and got away by utilising the underground city. We saw the incredible buildings of the famous McGill University from Ste-Catherine.

The classical buildings of McGill University sitting under Mont-Royal.

Christ Church Cathedral in Rue Ste-Catherine.

The underground city is a network of pedestrian tunnels under roads which enter commercial buildings, sometimes in spectacular atriums and othertimes in big shopping malls. The network included the large underground central railway station. We managed to get quite lost in this network - signposting is poor and intended for the locals.

Stunning artwork in foyer of IATA World Headquarters, Montreal

The weather for our couple of days in Montréal was excellent - sunny and bitterly cold. This seems to continue a cycle we have fallen into. Driving days are snowy, windy and generally unpleasant - sightseeing days outside our Jeep are beautiful but uber-cold. That's good planning, isn't it?

The Hotel de Ville on Rue Notre-Dame.

As with everywhere we stopped, Montréal deserved much more time than we gave it, but we are now moving to a timetable, with the date of our return to New York preordained. So we had to move on.