Vieux (Old) Montréal and more bagels!

Wednesday April 11 – Sunday April 15

Most of this week was spent unpacking boxes, as you can imagine.  We are making progress though! 

We did take a break one day and went down to Vieux Montreal, the Old Town and wandered through the big domed shopping area called Marche Bonsecours, which was built in 1847.  This building housed Montreal’s City Hall from 1852 to 1878, then continued as a farmer’s market.  It closed in 1963 and was slated for demolition but was later transformed into a multi-purpose facility with shops, restaurants and rental spaces.  

Here is another landmark we passed along the way – Chapel Notre-Dame Bonsecour.  This is referenced in the popular song "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen (who was from Montréal). 

The streets in Vieux Montréal are paved with bricks that give it that “old world” feel.  We stepped into an art gallery with works from various First Nations Peoples and saw a tusk from a  mammoth that was  30,000 years old, weighed about 4000 pounds and was priced at a mere $140,000.00.   



And here is David in the Place Jacques-Cartier, a huge public square, also known as New Market Place.   In 1847, the square was renamed in honour of Jacques Cartier, the explorer who claimed Canada for France in 1535.

You can see Nelson’s Column, Montreal’s oldest public monument in the background.

Shifting gears here… a friend recently commented on FaceBook that he was voluntarily given a “senior” discount. Now I know how that feels - I have had multiple occurrences of people giving up their seats to me on the bus and on the metro.  It is a lovely gesture but makes me feel old, which I guess I am J    

Here are a few other random sights from our neighborhood, 
which is called Monkland Village. 

Lots of shops, grocery stores, restaurants, and more wall art. 

For today’s bagel outing, we tried the famous St. Viateur Bagel and Café, just a few blocks from our apartment.  My perception of this place was that it was going to be overpriced and touristy. What a pleasantly surprise!  They had a very diverse breakfast menu, very reasonably priced and the bagels are made fresh on site.  

I decided to try the breakfast special. 

For $9.95 CAD (that’s about $7.75 USD) I had two eggs over medium (cooked perfectly!), potatoes (hot and crispy on the outside, tender on the inside) 3 pieces of sausage, a bagel with fromage a la crème  l’érable (maple cream cheese), beans (ok, that’s kind of weird), 3 slices of fruit and creton (pork pate – ok – that is certainly another non-standard breakfast item).  Even though the beans and the pate were not something I would order again, the meal was delicious.  Add coffee for $1.00 – we’ll be back!

 

We are keeping busy - learning our way around: where to buy which groceries, where to mail a package, when to wait for the light and when you can keep on walking... little things.  It still feels like being on vacation (to me) - which makes it fun!