Thirty seven years later, Montreal echoed with deju vu' for me. Montreal is a port city on the St. Lawrence River which empties out into the Atlantic. There are a pair of islands in the center of the river one of which was the site of Expo '67. (The island, incidentally, was built up from all the dirt and rock dug out to build the subway system in Montreal.) Countries from all over the world built pavilions to display their cultures and present their expositions. It was amazing and exciting. In those simpler times, we were just turned loose on the Exposition grounds and given check times and points. Then we were off again. High points for me: The monorail that circled the exposition. My first viewing of 'real art' - I saw The Pieta by Michelangelo - it was in the Italian pavilion. Exposure to different styles of architecture - I especially remember the Asian pavilions with their distinctive architectures. And, of course, the United States pavilion which was a clear geodesic dome!
Montreal was deja vu' in more ways than my sketchy memory of 37 years ago. It was New Orleans revisited. I think if New Orleans had retained its French language, it would be a dead ringer for Montreal. Oh, with the exception that Montreal is about 3000% cleaner than New Orleans. There's the similar French historical component, a similar founding time-line (late 1600's), a port economy, and a takeover of the city by English speaking entrepreneurs. The BIG difference is that the French language made a comeback in Montreal while it died out in New Orleans.
The language element has stamped a character on Montreal that is both charming and infuriating. Quebec is an island of French in a sea of English. Since the 1960's Quebecians have been militant about maintaining the French language inside the province. This is not a dual language city. ALL signs for EVERYTHING are in French, and if you're lucky, with tiny, little English translations underneath the French. An example of infuriating: We couldn't figure out how to buy a 3 day metro card (which you can only get from a machine) because there was no English option until you got to the third step of a four step process. Thank heaven there was a metro employee sitting on a stool next to the machine helping tourists like us. It kind of defeats the purpose of the machine, but we were grateful for his help. Also infuriating, was the tour guide on the bus tour we took: Her English was limited at best, and it really affected her ability to tell us about the city - the reason we went on the tour. We were grateful for the metro because we didn't have to drive anywhere. There was no English translation on any road sign which made driving a little too adventurous in a strange city.
Montreal is a city of churches - both Protestant and Catholic. I got the feeling that in the 18th and 19th centuries each faith put up as many elaborate churches as they could possibly build trying to 'one-up' the other culture. These magnificent churches stick up over the landscape of the city. The Basilica of Notre Dame built in the 1820's is exquisite and today is considered the number one attraction in the city. I would definitely agree. It only took eight years to build it, and the exterior is a miniature Notre Dame in gray limestone. The interior is made entirely of carved and decorated wood. They present the church in a great way: there is an evening multi-media presentation using lights and film to explain the architecture and the founding of Montreal as it relates to this Catholic Church. This is still a working church. There are lots of these churches, convents, and monasteries that are no longer functioning religious buildings and have been converted to private residences. The other 'big' church is called The Oratory, dedicated to St. Joseph. It has 192 steps leading up to it which the faithful on feast days sometimes climb on their knees. This was an impressive building.
Just as in New Orleans, there is an 'old city' (the "Vieux Carre" in New Orleans, called the "Vieux Montreal" up here.) There's a little 18th century French architecture left, and lots of 19th century Victorian architecture. The 'old city' is entirely made of gray limestone - a legal requirement in the 1800's for fire protection. This was the commercial heart of the city, and a destructive fire so common in the era of oil lamps and open fire places would have been much too costly. The Vieux Montreal buildings are uniformly cut limestone blocks cheek to jowl to no open spaces at all between buildings. The older French buildings are mortared rough limestone brick with small multi-paned windows set into the stone. I think I would have enjoyed the old city part of Montreal more is I hadn't lived in New Orleans for almost eight years. This area just seemed like a cleaner French Quarter. What I did really enjoy was the Botanical Garden. That was the best part of the trip for me. This Garden easily compared with the famous Butchart Gardens in western Canada. While the Butchart is compact, the Montreal Gardens were huge. We didn't even manage to get through the half dozen greenhouses or walk any of the pathways that wind among the lawns and trees on the back half of the Gardens. I think the picture from the top of the Observation Tower which is a portion of the Olympic Parc shows how large the botanical gardens are:
We purposely decided not to take in the Fine Arts Museum or the Contemporary Art Museum. Drake was lukewarm at best, and we had limited time. We both felt that these museums would have been a pale copy of the New York City museums. How do you top the Metropolitan or the MOMA? The museum we did visit was completely unique. The Archeology Museum was built over an actual archeological dig down into the old city of Montreal all the way down to 1350. This land was originally the site of a major Iroquis settlement. When the French arrived in the mid 1600s, the Iroquois were swifty displaced. No wonder the Iroquois fought on the English side in the French and Indian Wars of the mid 18th century.
This place was fascinating. I had never actually been to an archeology dig before. You descend into the basement, and we walked around the dig site where they used colored lights to highlight various 'finds' and identifed the lighted areas with color coordinated signs. Most interesting: Walking down Rue St. Paul to get to the museum and realizing after looking in at the models that this street's origin was the original Iroquis path along the river. I was also thrilled to see an actual cobblestone street laid down in the 18th century from ballast stones used in the ships that docked at the Montreal port. It was actually covered over by later building as was an entire river that was used as a sewage dump in the 18th century. Appropriately, this 'river', originally a small river flowing into the St. Lawrence is called the Lost River. This was a very good museum and gave me a real sense of the history of Montreal.
An added bonus was a short term exhibition about how wine making came to France. (The short version: Roman soldiers leaving the Roman Army in the 1st century were encouraged to take up land right where they were invalided out, marry local girls and cement the Roman Empire. Those Roman boys who settled in Gaul figured out a good way to make a living was to grow grapes and make wine just like back home in Italy. It wasn't long before they were dominating the wine trade.)
We had a couple of lovely French meals; not quite as many as we had hoped, but anything is better than cooking in my book, and we spent one evening in a jazz club. Another big impression of Montreal is how 'young' it is. There are at least three major universities inside the city, and the main part of Montreal just teems with young people in the 20 - 30 age group. There's shopping out the wazoo. In fact, I think the 'hip' shopping was probably on par with New York City. We went lots of places where we were easily the oldest people in sight. Our subway stop outside our hotel was the metro entry point to Sherbrooke University, so every time we rode the subway back to our hotel, we we were surrounded by hordes of college students.
The hotel we chose was great. It was very comfortable and it was literally across the street from the metro station. The more subways I ride, the more I'm envious of the cities that took the plunge and built them. The hotel was 'across the river', and we saved about $100 a night plus parking which was free at this hotel. It took us less than 15 minutes to reach the heart of Montreal, and we didn't have to drive into town. With the confusing French highway system that was a real benefit. Overall, I'm glad I went to Montreal, but after New York, it seemed to be such a small city. We didn't find nearly enough 'stuff' we wanted to do. It wasn't a matter of picking and choosing and having to forego, but rather choosing the few things we thought would be worth our time.
Here are the rest of the pictures:
https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2011MontrealTouringTheCity?authkey=Gv1sRgCNqM-JSA85TqwQE#
https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2011MontrrealVieuxMontreal?authkey=Gv1sRgCIXUwu31w4H_Ew#
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