Celebrating the New Year in Montreal (Part 2)

Index:

Saturday, December 31
I’ll admit that my first morning in Montreal I just did not feel like getting out of bed.  I was rather comfortable and it was well, much warmer than compared to the weather outside.  I eventually found the courage to get up and get ready and headed down to the lobby, contemplating if I would avail myself of the free Embassy Suites breakfast.  I took one look at the very crowded dining area and figured that I would much rather go find something else.  What that was I don’t remember quite anymore, but that’s just what happens when you wait forever to try to write something up.

The plan was to head for Mont Royal first thing, but the weather was looking to be much less than stellar, so I continued my exploration of Old Montreal.  I headed down Rue Saint Paul Ouest walking past Place Royal and to Place d’Youville / Place de la Grande-Paix (which are the same place, but apparently the name was changed to the second back in 2001).  Place d’Youville is a public space or square down the center of the road of the same name and contains several museums including the Pointe-à-Callière Museum and Centre d’histoire de Montréal.  It was still relatively early in the morning and I found that the while the Pointe-à-Callière Museum would be open later in the day, the Centre d’histoire de Montréal was closed for the holiday weekend.  I figured that I would come back later in the day, but with a slight bit of what appeared to be freezing rain starting to fall I made my way across the old city to the Marché Bonsecours (Bonsecours Market).

City Streets

Place d'Youville / Place de la Grande-Paix

Marché Bonsecours is a fairly impressively large building visible from the riverfront in Montreal that started out as a farmers market and closed in 1963.  At some point since then the building was saved from demolition that houses shops, restaurants, and supposedly office and meeting space.  I didn’t know all that at the time, but I figured it would be rather full with stalls/stands selling goods.  Thing is I walked through and I have to say there just wasn’t much that I was into, as it was mostly little boutique shops that had things of either no interest to me or a decent bit out of my price range.  I still made a point to explore what I could and eventually made my way to a cafe to get some coffee.

Once warmed up and with the freezing rain stopping, I headed back outside to see about visiting the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel which is located next to market, and which gives the market its name.  I walked up to the ticket window and was denied yet again – closed for the holiday weekend and not opening until Tuesday.  I opted to take a look of what I could of the exterior and the surrounding buildings.  Just something to add to the list for a future trip (I would really like to come to Montreal in spring or late summer).

Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel

Wait - Am I In France?

With nothing to see or do, I made my way back towards a Metro station and rode out to the Mont Royal station.  I had read about a place that was supposed to offer up some amazing sandwiches, so I made my way to the Café Santropol, which I walked past without even realizing it at first – I must have looked a little lost.  Once inside though I found myself in cozy establishment that was nowhere near busy and a menu that made it very difficult to make decisions.  Starting out I had to go with a Café Moka – I needed to get warm first!  Once I thawed out a bit, I found settled on the Jambon a la Menthe (Minted Ham) sandwich.  This sandwich consisted of smoked ham, apple and cucumber slices, and mint jelly served on what they call Santropol Bread with a small salad served on the side.  When it first came out I was impressed with the size, it was huge!  And second it was incredibly delicious – the bread was perfectly soft and the mint jelly really added something that I’ve never thought to put on sandwich before.  Take a look for yourself:

Minted Ham - Café Santropol

I finished up that amazing sandwich and then made my way towards the Parc du Mont-Royal.  Cafe Santropol is very near and after passing through a smaller park and noticing a pick up game of hockey being played I found myself at the edge of Mont Royal at the George-Étienne Cartier Monument.  Not being Canadian, nor an expert in Canadian history means that quite frankly I had really no idea as to what level of importance this monument has.  I still really don’t know, but I do know that it is a monument to George-Étienne Cartier, who was apparently one of the fathers of confederation of Canada and a Premier of Canada East – so an important politician from back in the day.

Here the snow was densely covered in snow and on the slopes here on the edge of the park there were plenty of young ones sledding down the hills and into hay bale barriers.  I contemplated in my head for a moment of asking someone to let me “rent” their sled for $5, but decided that probably wasn’t a great idea.  There was a cardboard box on the ground that I also considered, but I remembered back to last January to that failed attempt in Central Park in NYC.  I started my way along the trail “Chemin Olmsted” thinking that I might actually hike up the “mountain”, but after looking at my map (which probably didn’t have every trail on it), I figured that the more circuitous route it took might take me too long to reach my destination.  Not wanting that to happen I quickly retreated back down to street level where I waited for a #11 bus to take me.

George-Étienne Cartier Monument

Parc du Mont-Royal

Waiting on the 11 Bus

I consulted Google Maps and had in my head how many number of stops that it would take to reach my destination.  Only problem is that the number of stops on the bus didnt seem to match up with what Google offered up, and I wound up a few stops further down the line when I realized I was probably too far.  It meant a 10-15 minute walk through the snow, but which also meant an encounter with a friendly horse of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (Police) mounted unit, whose headquarters are located on park grounds.  The horse seemed interested in me and maybe it thought I would give it something.  But I had nothing and after taking a few shots I made it to my original intended destination.

From this spot its a short walk to the Chalet du Mont Royal, although the signs if I recall correctly told me that it was 0.7km – perhaps I was reading them wrong?  Anyways, from here you get a good view of the downtown core of Montreal and across the river.  Being a relatively bad day for weather (low, gray clouds and the sun nowhere to be seen), you couldn’t see much or at least recognize much of what was in the distance.  Downtown wasn’t a problem however.  I decided to hang out up here for a while just looking out over the city and checking out the actual building before heading out on part two of this hike.

SPVM Cavalerie

Montreal Skyline

Me + Montreal

Happy New Year!

Chalet du Mont Royal

Getting to the next landmark on Mont Royal involved me hiking through the woods on what I am pretty sure is a service road or just a paved path, albeit covered in snow.  It was quiet and since it was getting closer and closer to dark there were not as many people up here as back at the Chalet.  Which was nice – relatively alone in the quietness of the woods surrounded by snow covered pine trees.  It’s only a 1.3km walk when you reach the Croix du Mont Royal or Mount Royal Cross.  It’s exactly what you would think it is: a cross that happens to be 103ft tall and is illuminated.  Supposedly the first cross was placed here back in the 1600s and an illuminated one was installed in the early 1900s.  There really isn’t much to really see or do there, so after a few shots I found a path that looked like it might link back up with the road so I headed on out.

Road Less Traveled - Making My Way To The Top

Croix du Mont Royal

I wound up at a vantage point that gave me a view of the Olympic Stadium which was of course, covered in a gray overcast clouds.  I decided to try out my gorillapod on the railing here along with my telephoto lens, but with those weather conditions it wasn’t going to help much.  Eventually the bus came and picked me up and back down the mountain I went.  A kinda funny moment was while waiting for the bus two people got fed up and decided to walk down along the road.  Well the bus came about 5 minutes later and we passed them waving and hoping the bus would stop.  No such luck and that’s what you get for not reading the schedule that was posted at the stop.

Eventually back at my hotel I had to figure out what I was going to do for New Years Eve, since it was that night.  As I have noted earlier, one of the downsides with taking last minute trips such as this is that I don’t have that much time to figure out what is going on in a city.  I had noticed that there was going to be fireworks, a concert, and other activities around Place Jacques-Cartier and Parc du bassin Bonsecours, so I figured I would do that as spending it inside somewhere like a bar just seemed lousy when I can do that back at home any night of the week.  This however was the easy part.  I still needed to figure out a dinner somewhere and it being New Years Eve I figured I wouldn’t really care too much about how much it was going to cost.

I failed when looking around online at the hotel so I figured that I would walk around Old Montreal and see what I saw and what looked good.  There were a few finer establishments that looked really good offering up steaks and other things.  A few that I checked on Google or Yelp actually turned out to get consistently average to negative reviews unfortunately.  Plus I had the whole everyone is here problem and not having made any reservations anywhere.  This meant I found myself wandering for over an hour.

Place Jacques-Cartier (Before Dinner)

Old Montreal All Lit Up

Eventually this led me to settling on a place called Restaurant Papillon.  It appeared to be an Italian place, but they had a special menu for the night that was decently priced and because I was willing to sit at the bar, had space for me without waiting.  I started off with a beer which led to a pretty tasty soup and from there more beer and a rack of lamb that was very good.  I took my time with my meal and finished up with desert and coffee.  By the time I was done it was about 1.5 hours until 2012 started so I started to make my way to the waterfront.  I stopped by the concert happening in Place Jacques-Cartier for a bit, despite not understanding any of the music that was in French, but soon enough I knew I needed to get a more upfront position for the countdown.

Concert Stage - Place Jacques-Cartier

I settled on the Parc du bassin Bonsecours, where I went ice skating the night before.  Telus, a Canadian telecommunications provider was sponsoring a number of activities including ice sculpting displays and free marshmallow roastings!  I’m not going to lie, roasting a marshmallow in the last few minutes of the year was a different way to close out the year.  After that I got near the ice skating rink figuring that would be the best vantage point that wasn’t going to be all crammed.  Honestly, I was surprised that I wasn’t in a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd.

Ice Sculpting Demo

Roasting Marshmallows Over An Open Fire

5, 4, 3, 2, 1….HAPPY NEW YEAR!  Once that happened the sky erupted in a very impressive fireworks display.  It just kept going and going and going.  I’m thinking it lasted for at least 15 minutes maybe even 20 minutes.  Definitely put the fireworks display back home in Panama City Beach to shame.  Not really sure to how to describe it, but take a look for your self:

Happy New Year!

More Fireworks

Place Jacques-Cartier - Packed for Concert

Place Jacques-Cartier - Concert

This entry was posted in Travel, Trip Report. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

Comments

Leave a Comment


%d bloggers like this: