Day three in Montreal helped me feel a bit better. Half of our time in Montreal was over, and with every hour that passed I was ever closer to getting out of the city. We figured when we woke up that morning we should do some of the things we didn’t manage to do during our our first two days in the city. Old Montreal, Notre Dam Basilica, and the Bio Dome were on the agenda for our Monday.

We were within walking distance of the older side of the city, so we decided to use our legs and get a glimpse of the French Chinatown on the way. Not much was opening or happening since most people were off using the long weekend to the full advantage. Chinatown was quite small but had some spectacular entrance ways guiding you in. It started raining on us at this point, but it was actually a nice drizzle, cooling us down. From Chinatown we had another 15 minutes until we hit old Montreal. I believe I said in my previous post that Old Montreal was beautiful, but marred by all the vehicles and tourist shops lining the streets. Oh! There was also a homeless shelter in the middle of one of the streets, which meant on several of the streets there were groups of homeless people bumming money. We wandered around for a little bit, but began heading in the direction of the Notre Dame Basilica.

Notre Dame is incredibly impressive, despite me not being a Catholic or much of anything in terms of religion. It just is a gorgeous building overall, inside and out. Chris and I were in awe of the splendor inside, but we both felt a bit weird over how much money must have been put into a single building by a religion that supposedly acts as a charity. Ah well, we took it for what it was and enjoyed the sights. We opted out of the guided tour, and I’m glad we did because from the snippets I could hear from other tours it was quite boring. It costs $5 to enter, which isn’t bad at all. We spent about 20 minutes inside the Church before we decided to head onwards in our journey.

We wandered down to the nearest train station in order to get to Bio Dome which we had purchased tickets from during our trip to the Insectarium and Botanical Garens. I’m not normally a fan of places that keep animals locked up, but I made a concession in my ethics to get my money’s worth. I had also heard from my mom’s friend Ramona (shout out!) that the Bio Dome was well worth it and very well done. And it was! The place was amazing. Since it was a holiday it was fairly busy, but still managable. The Bio Dome is essentially a zoo in a building, which is quite unique, but nice since the weather doesn’t affect the experience. There are several different world areas displayed in the building, and all of the animals seem very happy in their habitats. From monkeys to penguins to giant turtles this building has it all!

After the Bio Dome we were quite hungry from wandering around all day. I had been itchy to get some poutine since we arrived, so we headed to a little place near our hostel once we got back into the gay village. Well I must say the poutine was HORRIBLE. It was just gross and rank. I got to cross it off of my list, but it was simply unsatisfying. See the above picture for the gross poutine. Luckily the next day I managed to go to La Belle Province and get a much better poutine that was incredibly delicious.

And thus ended the fun we had in Montreal. We tried to go out for St. Jean Baptiste but couldn’t find much that was going on. We flew out Wednesday morning and headed out to Toronto, where I would be staying for two weeks until I was heading to New York City.

#478. See the Notre Dam Basilica in Montreal
#243. Eat poutine in Montreal