Friend-os

It seems that this summer is Chelsea’s Tour of Canadian Cities. Only four days after my feet were reunited with Calgary’s desert floors, I was boarding another flight bound for Montreal. My friend Chris and I were staying in Montreal from the 20-25th and the possibilities seemed endless upon departure. We didn’t have too much planned, though I did have a few things planned that revolved around a trip to the city of Montreal in Quebec. I figured my trip was off to a good start after seeing a land formation shaped like a penis, but our travel time took longer than expected due to our connecting flight from Pearson to Trudeau was cancelled. I admit I was peeved at first, but a few days after I received an email informing me of a $69 credit towards a future flight and my wounds were soothed. Yet one more reason to love Westjet. We did eventually arrive in Montreal, and discovered that it’s a flat fare to the downtown from the airport, only 35 dollars. Kick ass! Our cabbie was incredible to top it off, funny and giving us suggestions of what to do and where to go. I ended up with high expectations based on the evidence I had been presented with.

Well, my expectations were not exactly met. Though I have asked if I am insane because of it, I will admit that I am not a big fan of Montreal. My crank was not turned sufficiently. There were several things to cross off of my list while I was there, staying in a hostel, eating poutine, and so forth, and I did manage to get through them, but the atmosphere or something was off. I simply did not enjoy my stay there. While most people as I mentioned ask if I am insane or crazy for not liking the city, some people have professed the same odd distaste with the old French city. Regardless, we were there for 4 days/5 nights and there was not much I could do about the situation except live through it.

We arrived at the hostel around 8pm on Friday the 20th. While it had fairly decent reviews, Chris told me that compared to European hostels it was on the lower end of the scale. It did have a quaint charm to it but that quaint charm seemed to reform itself into rickety and unable to pass building codes in some parts of the structure. We were on the more private side of the two buildings that made up the hostel, as we had booked a private room, shared bath. It may as well have not had doors or walls, since our lock didn’t actually lock the door (I’ll post video later) and you could hear everything on our floor without even trying. Conversations could be had between rooms without raised voices. Glad I brought my ear plugs! Safety didn’t seem to be a huge concern to the owners or managers, they had signs saying to lock your belongings in the lockers in the basement, but provided far less lockers in comparison to tenets, which makes no sense to me, but whatever.

I suppose upon our arrival I wasn’t too concerned about the state of our hostel, I generally assumed we wouldn’t be spending much time there. Alas, there is not much to do in Montreal that doesn’t cost an ass load of money. Old Montreal is free and beautiful to a point, but the beauty is marred by all of the cars, homeless men, and tourist-shit boutiques lining the streets. The St. Lawrence is fairly beautiful but I was put off by the lack of public access beaches and parks along it, as industrial factories seemed to have precedence over everything else. Rue St. Catharine’s and rue St. Dennis provide some entertainment, with panhandlers and loads of sexy gay men, but like most of Montreal, the sleazy factor takes over, as well as the over priced tourist-shit.

I digress from my rant against the city. What did we do while we were there? The first night we were there, not much of anything. By the time we were settled into our hostel, it was after 10, and we decided to do just a quick jaunt up the main strip we were near in the Gay Village and head back to bed so we could get an early start the next day. Peep shows and gay men galore on Rue St. Catharine’s and not much else.

The next morning we got up early and headed out for some croissants and activity. The croissants were good and gave us energy to navigate the Metro system. Well, it’s not that hard, their underground subway system is actually one of the finer points of the city. Easy to navigate and quick, who can complain about that. On the first day we decided to head over to the side of the city with the Bio-dome and Botanical Gardens. Since we had traveled that far and there didn’t seem to be much to do in the way of “free”, we shelled out around $20 to get a student discounted ticket pack for the Insectarium, Botanical Gardens, and Bio-dome. First stop was the Insectarium, which was actually quite nice and fairly unique. I can imagine it would be a huge draw for kids, but luckily there was a sincere lack of children while we were there. I wasn’t that into it since I’m not a huge fan of bugs, but there were certainly interesting parts and Chris was enthralled by it. We didn’t spend that long inside, since you can only look at so many random bugs before it grows a bit dull.


After a quick break to sit and recoup in from the heat, we headed to the Botanical Gardens. Now, when I added this to my list, I thought that Botanical Gardens had gorgeous plant sculptures and was completely done out. Well I was wrong. I still enjoyed my time there, other than the absolutely confusing nature of the place, but it just wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. It was still gorgeous and very well done. The only part Chris and I didn’t like was how confusing it was to get around, we were completely lost for a while, and you couldn’t go five feet without other people looking aimlessly at their maps trying to figure out how to leave. If you are going there be prepared to have several hours to be spent lost or have an insane sense of direction!

At this point we were very hot and drained so we headed back to our hostel for an afternoon of napping and escaping the heat. The evening was fairly uneventful, as we just wandered around the streets of Montreal looking for some excitement.

Day two we weren’t expecting much out of the city, we were kind of bored of it already. Regardless, we ventured out to Petite Italie looking for some adventure. With another trip on the Metro under our belts, we wandered around seeing what we could. Little Italy in Montreal is cute, without a doubt and a very nice place to spend a morning or afternoon, maybe do a little shopping. After a quick stop in a Italian shop to grab some pesto for Chris and some nougat for me, we headed back to the downtown core to do a little shopping. We saw Mont Royal, but decided it was too hot to be bothered to climb the giant hill, and headed into a more historic section of the city, past McGill. While it was tourist-y I love the street vendors that lined the more popular streets that had been shut down to vehicle traffic. I bought myself a nice bracelet and Chris some ridiculous Kayne shades that caused me to giggle.

We headed out that night to a small cafe and had some fruit smoothies and enjoyed the cool evening air. We only had two days left in Montreal and it was a bittersweet feeling. We wanted to go, but we felt there was so much more to see, that we might be missing. Then a French guy kept talking to me in French about losing his pen and ruined the mood completely.

#361. Stay in a hostel
#448. Walk through the Botanical Gardens in Montreal