Day 108 Montreal Canada
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
116
205
Trip End
Nov 22, 2008
Montreal,
Quebec,
Canada
Sunday, August 24, 2008
The start for the day after breakfast was to change the wheel.
The spare is not of the best quality, (read a little thin in tread) so Earnie and Rick practiced the wheel changing skill again. They are improving and falling into a routine (bah to that!) but will not yet qualify for the racing teams wheel changers. Successfully accomplished and cleaned up we roll the Castle out.
We had a couple of options to reach our destination, take the freeway direct to Montreal or take a lesser road along the St Lawrence water way and gain that experience.
Gee was there really an option, although Mandy was programmed, we chose the slower route and enjoyed a wonderful drive along the riverside road. The road surface was better than some of the freeways we have travelled along, which was a bonus as well.
Little villages along the way and at one stage we could look across the water to see the USA land just across the river. The drive is along an historic route with a couple of sections as historical sites with notes about the conflicts during the 1813 period between the English and Americans.
Understanding was gained when we could see, how close the land borders come, the reasons for the engineering of the Rideau Canal we had viewed and reported yesterday.
Interesting to note that we came across an information centre still in the Ontario Province close to the border of the Quebec province, but they were unable to supply us with a map of either, Quebec nor Montreal. Gee talk about co-operation between Provinces?
Never mind, this does nothing to deter the Travellers we simply keep going.
We knew when we crossed the border of the provinces, it is quite distinct.
How? might be the question, really simple, the road signs go from being written in English with French underneath, to completely written in French? GREAT this is going to be fun, to take Rue instead of a road and not only that, the route numbers have been changed as well.
We were unable to find a rest area alongside the St Lawrence; it appears to be private small docks or private housing all along. The houses and the gardens can only be described as really neat and well kept, with some very large blocks and houses with nicely laid out gardens. It was a treat to experience this drive.
We took a side road to attempt to find a park to have a break and a cuppa but to no avail, so we simply pulled up in a wider section of a road and had the cuppa. Then onto the freeway to head into Montreal, hey it is Saturday and lets us see how we can handle the city and the French written "Rues" (roads, for the non- bilingual speakers like the Travellers have now become!)
Well we would have been only on the freeway for about 5 mins and we came across a rest area containing an information centre, (gee guess we were a little impatient for our cuppa!)
Ok let's head in and get a road map of the province and any information about Montreal.
Great except they have a "number system" to get information, similar to our RTA, you take a number and wait until you are called, GREAT! EXCEPT it is all in FRENCH!.
Ok we take our turn and ask for a road map, The Young lady spoke in English with a very heavy French accent, and spoke at a fast pace, making it little challenging to comprehend, we are offered a free map of Montreal and Quebec city, with some brochures of things to do. To obtain a road map of the province, we are told we have to pay for it, $3.50, gee they are free in every other information place we have been in, that HURTS!, but get over it and get one.
Well we decided to dive into the deep end, why wouldn't we? Let's head into Montreal and look around and see if it is in fact open on weekends, we are hesitant to have another Salt Lake City experience that is closed on weekends.
Well great, did we mention that all the Rues are in French and to ascertain the sortie( exit) on the correct Rue was a little of a challenge, but hey! we have been everywhere man and a little bit of French is not going to deter The AussieTravellers. With some anxious moments and some interesting changes of pace, we managed to find ourselves in the city, taking some "interesting" routes, to the point we came to an overhead bridge that had the height in metric, and we know the Castle is 12'5" high but what does that relate to in metric? Pull over, grab the calculator and do a quick conversion, to find we are 3.75m and the bridge height is 4m so we should be fine, away we go. The city has fairly narrow roads and a few one way streets. We managed to navigate our way around and did a few ups and downs of the busy streets, as well as negotiate around double parked delivery vehicles; we ascertained that the city is alive on the weekends with the foot traffic and car traffic we encountered.
Ok head out, the driver requires to have a break, from our experience of yesterday, we decided to find the nearest Wal Mart in the city area, Mandy does her thing, EXCEPT of course she is unaware of the height restriction we have, and attempted to take us into a street that had an overhead clearance of 3.75m, Nope we didn't attempt to test our conversion calculations, Earnie and Rick also didn't want to let the tyres down just to fit through.
We found the Wal Mart and had our lunch and another cuppa, then bought milk, (complaining that the Canadian Wal Mart's are not as good as the American Wal Mart!) We know we have been there done that!
Ok we ask Mandy to take us to the selected KOA, this took us around a couple of the usual Mandy circles but we managed to negotiate our way out of the city to the KOA. This is south of Montreal and only around 38 kms from the USA border. We inquired about a bus to take a tour into the city from here, and yes the Greyline (our friendly bus about hop on and off again tours) will do this so we have booked that to take us into the city and explore Montreal, a city that has been here for around 400 years.
We should have an interesting day tomorrow, dealing with the Canadians that prefer to talk in French, and the Three Aussie Travellers have a very small understanding of the lingo, Fair dinkum, are they English speaking or French? Are they linked to England as we are or not? Or is it still a question of sour grapes because they were belted up so long ago in the French/English wars? If so as we say in Australia, "build a bridge"
Dunno maybe tomorrow's report will clarify some things for us! Here's hoping.
