A day in Montréal
Well, this has to have been the shortest citytrip I ever made. Just a mere 23 hours after landing on the flight from Zürich, I am now typing this blog post waiting for Air Canada to take me onwards to Toronto. Well, normally people don’t take flights for such a short distance, but since it was included in my ticket, I’m not complaining.
Anyhow, this whole trip kicked off at Brussels airport, 5:45 in the morning, where I said goodbye to my girlfriend for four months (since I’ll be continuing to Boston for an exchange semester). I then flew to Frankfurt, connecting onwards to Zürich, where I was stupid enough to go through passport control immediately, so I had to kill two hours in an empty terminal (Zürich’s intercontinental terminal has very few things to see or do). The flight to Zürich itself was very pleasant though, but you can judge for yourself from the picture J.
Then onwards to Montréal. That flight was fairly uneventful, except for the fact that I was surrounded by kids who couldn’t sit still, and further down the aisle a couple of babies crying intermittently. On top of that, there was one guy who managed to snore his way through the flight o_O! Thank goodness for the in-flight entertainment system. I’ve seen a couple of action flicks: Olympus Has Fallen, A Good Day to Die Hard and G.I. Joe: Retaliation. And read a book on the Kindle. How else to kill time, right? Near the end of the flight, they served us our second meal: pizza and ice cream! 😀 With that stuff still in my stomach, I cleared customs and border control at Montréal airport, and not too long afterwards, was on my way outside.
An hour and nine dollars (Canadian, at this moment about 1.35 CAD for 1 EUR) later, I found myself at the hostel where I would be staying the night. I was tired, but after putting my sheets on the bed, I decided not to give in to the jetlag, and go explore the city. Following a recommendation from the hostel staff, I started on foot towards “vieux-Montréal”, taking in all the different impressions. Well, the first one was already a timewarp, back to last summer when I strolled along Sunset blvd. Walking along rue Ste. Cathérine gave me exactly the same impression, but with Mont Royal in the background instead of the Hollywood hills. Except all the signs were in French. Ouch.
Somehow, French is supposed to be a delicate and sophisticated language, but combined with the bluntness of American buildings and blocks, it gives a really strange feeling.
Next flashback: Chinatown. I walked through there after walking through a street with peepshows and erotic theatres, thinking “Am I still on the right track?” but evidently, yes. The smell in Chinatown was so akin to the one in Shanghai, I immediately had to think of the school trip I made…
Afterwards, arriving in the supposed old city centre, I found that there was not too much to see, so I continued on to the old Port de Montréal. From there, you can see a really strange dome across the river, of which I’m still not sure about its purpose. There was also a small park nearby, where I powernapped for a good twenty minutes, before grabbing some food and going back to the hostel. There, they had planned a pub crawl for the evening, which I joined up until about midnight, in order to not miss the last metro back.
The following morning I got up at 8, waited half an hour for another person to stop showering so I could go to the toilet, and headed out the door. I was advised to climb (or rather, walk) the Mont Royal, and I didn’t regret it. You can really see the whole city from here, a good 200 meters above it. Too bad it was a foggy morning. There’s also a really big park there, which I decided to explore.
By 11:00 I started walking back to the hostel to pick up my luggage, and wait for the bus to take me to the airport.
In short: a 24 hour layover in a city you want to explore is a very good way to immediately burn off the jetlag!
Steven
FINAL NOTE: the weather in Montréal was not really ideally suited: a warm 27°C and a very high humidity level, leading to a Turkish steam bath effect which immediately gets you sweating! So, next time I’ll wear something else than jeans and a cotton shirt…