Montreal 3

Well, today was quite action-packed! After breakfast at the hotel, we took the car from the parking garage and went in search for gas. This was quite the adventure!! We drove around and around for what seemed like an hour before finally finding a place: $1.32/liter (there are 3.79 liters in a gallon, so that comes to about $5CAD a gallon, and since the exchange rate is pretty much $1CAD to $1USD, that makes it flippin' $5USD a gallon). We just got a few gallons to get us around town, and we'll fill up Wednesday when we get out of Montreal. It might be cheaper out there...

After we got gas, we headed for Mont Royal, a mountain/park area in town. It was beautiful and not too tall of a mountain, just a little ways up. We stopped at a look-out point to take pictures and the rain started. We drove on and stopped at another place where we thought we'd get to the summit, but after a HUGE hike upwards, we found nothing but a stinkin' picnic table. We wove our way down through the woods (one of my favorite things to do!) and got back to the main trail and eventually, back to our car. We stopped for ice cream along the way. Had to gain back those calories we lost on the HUGE hike upwards.

We then drove to an area called Old Montreal. All these big cities have an OLD area. It was very nice--brick-lined streets, lots of little restaurants and cheesy souvenir shops, that sort of thing. We walked a bit to the St. Lawrence river and saw some boats, but it was raining heavier at this point, so we walked back. It was a really nice area!

We hopped in the car and started to drive back when we found ourselves in Chinatown. We parked and walked a bit, only to find cheesy Chinese souvenir shops and some restaurants. We stopped at one and had lunch. We were the only ones in there--it was a bit nicer looking and a decent meal. Paul informed me that we've "only" spent about $40 a day on food so far. YIKES! That's basically eating out only one meal (though today was double that since we had breakfast at the hotel). That seems like a lot of money to me! We're still not sure how the credit cards are going to translate the money, but it might be a bit more in our favor. We'll see.

After Chinatown, we came back to the hotel intending to hit the rooftop pool, but it rained like crazy so Paul napped while I watched TV (and tried to nap). He woke up and we started a 14 game Yahtzee tournament, which ended in a split. We also ran out of Yahtzee score sheets so I was having to draw them as we went along. ☺ Kinda ruins the whole spirit of the tournament when it comes down to how many score sheets I can draw on one page.

Tomorrow, I'm not sure what's on the docket, but it's our last day in Montreal before we head to Quebec city. We'll likely do a little shopping and hope for good weather so we can finally go to the pool. I feel like I saw a good bit of the city, probably not as much as others might see but enough for us. We definitely longed for the laziness at the start of the trip, especially after the 19 hour car ride here. Worth every minute!!

More later from the next leg of our adventure in Canada....