I spent the morning of New Year's Eve back in the Old Port of Montréal, at La Pointe à Callière - the Montréal Archaeological Museum. Situated on a triangular strip of land near the river in Vieux Port, this relatively new museum chronicles the history of the City of Montréal from the Ice Age through European colonization and today.
20.00$ for a single admission. My tour of the museum began with a slick multimedia presentation narrated by Montréal herself. The auditorium was situated above an open excavation pit with exposed building foundations clearly visible - the site of the museum was last inhabited by an insurance company building from the 1800s, and was in the heart of the original European settlement of Montréal. The half-hour presentation was really pretty good, and covered the original settlement, cooperation and contre-temps with the aboriginal peoples, and the evolution of bilingual Montréal (although today French is the dominant language).
The exhibition space is a cleaned-up excavation of the foundation of that insurance building, and points below. It is peppered with exhibits of finds from the dig (and digs from around the city), including bones, pottery shards, old nails, coins and clothing. Very interesting displays, and all were bilingual. The museum is working to open up a section of old sewer tunnels to allow visitors to meander a while like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
There was also a special exhibition at the archeological museum -- strangely it was about the Beatles (the rock band -- not what would have inhabited those sewer lines!)
Lots of guitars, consumer goods like lunch boxes, matchbooks, clothing, opportunities to listen to the band's hits, and interesting factoids about the Beatles and their performances in Montréal.
I'm not really sure why the museum had a Beatles exhibition, but I would guess that they hosted it to draw additional traffic to the relatively young museum.
The place is pretty great for kids, too. There are several hands-on exhibits where kids can dig for bones and treasures, and to get their young Indiana Jones groove on.
Check out these Rolls Royces -- the Beatles sure knew how to ride in style!
I had lunch in the Old Port before returning to my hotel for a brief respite. It was cold -- very cold. The breeze didn't help. The air temperature was about -2 F at Noon, with a windchill of about -15 F.
I was dressed warmly in layers -- including thermal underwear -- but the cold still got to you, especially the strip of cold skin around the eyes, above the scarf and below the hat.
I wandered some more through different parts of the underground city on my way back to the hotel, partly to check it out and partly to avoid the cold. Probably took me an extra hour to get back to the hotel, but it was fun to people-watch.
Back at the hotel I met a group of 20-somethings from Hamilton, Ontario. The guys were in Montréal to party for the New Year, and they convinced me to go for a pint down the street (there are about 20 bars, restaurants and bistros along my hotel's street.) We enjoyed more than a pint, and I got an earful about the Junior World Hockey Championships, which were happening. Canada beat the U.S. for the title. One of the guys, Michael, wouldn't shut up about the intricacies of hockey!!
I left the guys after a few hours and returned to the hotel for a bit to get ready for New Year's back at the Old Port. As many of you know, I'm a morning person and 10 PM is a late night for me indeed - I'm not even sure that midnight really exists. It was about 8 PM and I decided to take a quick nap before donning my winter best and making the slog back to the Old Port. Though Montréal has a subway system, none of the stops are really that close to the Old Port. And, because there's a superhighway separating the Old Port from the rest of Montréal, you have to take specific streets to get over there.
I woke up from my nap at about 1:15 AM -- Happy New Year!! Instead of spending the New Year at the party in Old Port, I slept through it among the wood-paneled walls of my hotel room. Should've set an alarm, but I was only going to rest my eyes for a half-hour!! Lame is not the word for how I felt about it.
On New Year's Day -- colder still -- I thought I would hike up to the top of Mont Royal, the large hill that's the city's namesake.
I spoke with my hotel proprietor, who told me to take the subway to the Mont Royal stop (of course!) and then take a bus up to the top of the hill -- it would be too far and too cold to walk. He couldn't remember the bus number, but he said there were signs.
There was NO ONE on the streets at 9 AM. Barely any cars. Totally deserted. Almost everything was closed, except for Tim Horton's (read: Dunkin Donuts). Got to the Mont Royal metro stop. Found the bus stop. The buses were running on a Sunday schedule for the holiday, and the next bus (#11 if you care) wouldn't make its way to the stop for another 40 minutes. I decided to walk.
It took almost an hour to make the trek by foot -- up a windy road. The bus passed me when I was about 20 minutes from the top. It was so cold that my eye lashes were freezing and the vapor from my breath was freezing onto my scarf -- my black scarf was white with breath-frost.
Above: The Olympic Stadium, and the St. Lawrence beyond.
Below: Some big bridge separating the Island of Montréal from the rest of the Province of Québec.
I risked frostbite to take these pictures for you - really. My gloves were too clumsy to manipulate the camera.
Mont Royal is a huge park, and in the winter you can cross-country ski, skate, sled and do a whole bunch of winter-type stuff. There were a few brave souls there doing just that, but the parking lots were nearly empty. The warm and heated visitor centre was closed for the holiday -- no respite from the arctic cold! I did, however, finally find a smidgeon of sense and I took the bus back down the hill and to the metro stop.
Had lunch, wandered around for a bit (most places still closed, even many restaurants), and decided I should go home. I had originally planned to stay until Thursday, January 2nd, but I had heard about the impending snow storm from my Dad and I didn't want to drive through the mountains of Vermont and into the heart of the storm nearer to home. Left Montréal at about 4 PM. With a couple brief stops and the border crossing, made it home safely at about 11 PM. When I left Montréal it was -7 F; when I got home it was +20 F.... balmy.
