Greetings friends!
Being the over-achieving Type A people we are, we had the whole day planned out, centered around a self-guided bike tour of downtown Montreal along the canal. Unfortunately, as we were headed out the door, the rain drops and wind cautioned us to revisit our plans (nice to know weather.ca is just as unreliable as weather.com). Fortunately, being the Type B travel couple we are, we recombobulated just fine and decided to substitute with museum day!
We jumped on 'le metro' and headed to Olympic Park where the 1976 Summer Olympics took place. There are a lot of attractions in the Olympic Park area in addition to just exploring the really cool buildings that were built for the Olympics.
We even got to stand on the Olympic podium! (kinda) #goldmedalsforbeingawesome
The museums in the area included the biodome, planetarium, insectarium, and botanical gardens. So we decided to buy a combo deal to see both the biodome and insectarium/gardens. Best of all, we still got to explore the planetarium for free, just no shows (which Christina wouldn't have understood anyway because they were in French and during which her translator, Phen, would have fallen asleep!)
Here are some short descriptions of the activities:
The biodome housed four ecosystems: tropical rainforest, canadian forest, northern oceans, and arctic. We walked through all the areas reading about different animals and plants. We took a ton of pictures but have included some where the humans (us) are actually in them.
Planetarium:
Super chouette (cool) for science nerds like us. There were a lot of interactive learning stations about molecules and space and science!!! Most were for kids, but some puzzles were HARD. For example, the picture of the Pangea puzzle below that Christina became a little too obsessed with. We couldn't leave until it was complete, she fought of multiple children wanting to try it. But that's only because she went to Madison and believes in persistence!! #badgerincanada
Insectarium:
Un peu creepy crawly. There were insects and butterflies and spiders pinned to boards inside of cases. There were some live exhibits though which were even more creepy. We did learn some new things though, mostly about insect reproduction.
Jardin Botanique:
Le jardin botanique était magnifique, incroyable, chaque autre mot comme ça! Nous sommes en amour avec toutes les choses!
Christina's Translation: The gardens were so beautiful, incredible and some other nice words. Something about how we loved them.
After the insectarium, we ventured out into the botanical gardens. We did not expect them to be so huge and wonderful! There were multiple different themed areas including Chinese gardens, Native woods, flower gardens and scents courtyard. And throughout the entire gardens were really cool flower/plant statues; we took a picture with the shaggy dog. There were also these awesome indoor greenhouses with a bunch of cool flowers and plants that we definitely over-photographed.
In total, we spent about 5 hours at these attractions and on the train ride home we decided we needed a relaxing activity to end the day. We stopped at a bar near our hostel for a beer. It was finally nice and sunny by then so we actively searched for a bar with outdoor seating only to find out the drinks are way cheaper inside because they don't want the outside area to get so full (#ripoff). But, we sat outside anyway and enjoyed some Alexander Keiths beer, which we discovered the day before at beer fest! #prettymuchlocals. We then strolled to a nearby park to play frisbee and admire all the athletic Canadians running around.
Later that night, we met up with Christina's friends from study abroad who live in Montreal. We went to a really cool bar/restaurant called Deville Dinerbar. The food and drinks were really fancy and it was nice to catch up with/meet new friends!
Even though it wasn't the day we had planned the night before, it turned out to be a great first day filled with spontaneous tourist activities!
Thanks for reading,
Ginger & Curry (see plants for reference)
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