Jacques Cartier Bridge seen from Montreal
Until this afternoon, I believed like many Quebecers, that the Jacques-Cartier Bridge was designed by Gustav Eiffel, or that the bridge was a gift from France. Not without reason:
The finials are not ‘Eiffel towers’, but sure do resemble them! They measure 13′ and weigh 6 tons!
Bonus picture of the day:
Olympic tower seen from the Jacques Cartier bridge through the suicide prevention barrier
My grand-mother wanted to do something special with me this week and suggested we go to a museum. I hadn’t been to Pointe-à-Callière in at least fifteen years, so that’s what I suggested. This museum is built over the foundation of some of the oldest buildings in Montreal and the highlight is to go under ground and walk through the old stone foundations.
It’s been easy to see my grand-mother this week since she moved to Chambly and is now living a kilometre away from my mother’s house. I walked over this afternoon and she greeted me with a light lunch, then we headed to Montreal.
Pointe-à-Callière is located in the most scenic part of the island, the Old Port. Walking through the cobblestone streets is just like being in Europe. The whole area is slowly being gentrified and more new structures are springing up, but I don’t think we will ever lose the look and atmosphere of the Old Port.
Our tour of the museum started with an excellent multi-media presentation about highlights in Montreal history, from pre-history to today. I found it to be a little too upbeat and it glossed over the more negative issues like the French/English disputes, but I’m being a tad picky. For a twenty minute overview, it painted a pretty accurate portrait.
The special exhibit this fall is one about Rapa Nui, Easter Island, and I enjoyed it very much. I discovered that I knew almost nothing about Easter Island, such as the important fact that it is still inhabited today!
We then headed downstairs and and took a quick jaunt through the foundations, the highlight of which are the sewer systems that were way ahead of their times. This archaeological site takes you through more than 360 years of history, from a 17th century Catholic cemetery to an 18th century marketplace to the 19th century sewer systems. The whole thing is rather labyrinthine and we had to get directions back to the surface!
Merci pour la belle journée, grand-maman!
lunch was pretty enough for a picture!
my grand-mother’s balcony overlooks my childhood… only back then, in the ’80’s, there were only fields and trees instead of all those houses
my mother worked in that building for much of my childhood and we lived right across from it
Montreal skyline from the Champlain bridge
Old Port–contrast of the old and the new
more of the Old Port
Pointe-à-Callière
old foundations
more old foundations
in 1900, Montreal was Canada’s metropolis
the old sewer system
the old sewer system with a photograph showing what the exit would have looked like
more old sewage systems
walking out is like entering Europe
we walked out onto a movie set!
crossing the Victoria bridge, the first to connect the island of Montreal to the South Shore
Champlain Bridge seen from the Victoria Bridge
the ugliest building on the South Shore!!!
I love the street signs in Chambly because all the street names are explained; Lebel was named after a mayor
I think pizza buffs will agree with me that there is one pizza against which you measure all others. In all my travels across Canada and the US, I have yet to find a pizza has good as that offered by Tre Colori, a restaurant situated in my hometown of Chambly, Quebec. Imagine that!
Tre Colori’s pizza sauce is savory, but not, too pungent. The cheese is greasy and generous. The crust is what makes this pie stand out. Under the pizza, it is thin but not crispy, and at the edge it is doughy and yeasty. I like most pizzas with a lot of toppings, but Tre Colori’s has to be eaten plain.
the box hasn’t changed since I can remember
my half is plain; the other half has onions and mushrooms
close up of the texture
close up of the yummy dough ball they use to keep the lid away from the pizza
The restaurant has been in business since 1967 and I have eaten there all my life. It was one of my dad’s favourite restaurants, so I celebrated many milestones there, most notably my thirteenth birthday. The decor has changed over time, but the food is the same. They serve pasta and non-Italian dishes, but it’s only the pizza I crave when a wind blows me back into town.
Many people who transition to the full-time RV nomad lifestyle do not realise that they are moving to another version of ‘real life’ and that full-time RVing is not a perpetual vacation. You will find yourself facing the same responsibilities, from bills to housekeeping, and ‘tourism’ will eventually become less of a priority as you discover that every town is pretty much the same.
There will probably always be a bit of an exploration component, a given when you move from one strange locale to another, but there is more to discovering a community than hitting every museum. You can learn a lot about a town by spending a morning at a diner listening to the locals.
Moreover, full-time RVing does not change who you are at the core. A homebody recluse will most likely not become the star of the Sunday potluck and the neatnik won’t forgo the Saturday morning housekeeping blitz.
For more on this topic, read Jennifer’s post Learning Nomadism at livinginmycar.com
Montreal-style bagels
vs.
the bagels the rest of North America is subject to:
plain-old bagel
Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.
On a related note, if birds that fly near the sea are called seagulls, what do you call birds found near bays?
Bay gulls, of course. Bah-dum!