Montreal

After overnighting in a Walmart just outside Montreal we drove into Longueil which is a suburb of Montreal but off  the main island. The good thing about Longueil is that it has pretty cheap parking (only CAD 8 for all day) and a metro station. The journey into town from there is under 10 minutes and costs CAD 3.

We caught the metro into town and arrived at Berri-UQAM which is in the Latin quarter of town. We walked from here down to the old town and the quay side. We wandered around for a bit and then made it into china town.

In Chinatown we found an awesome all you can eat buffet for only CAD 9.95 each, so filled our boots and then walked up to the downtown area. We explored the underground city briefly – its just a mall really, and then walked up to the Montreal International Jazz Festival. There wasn’t a huge amount going on but there were a couple of bands playing and some street performers.

After that we headed back through a really dodgy area with some great graffiti to the metro and back to Longueil. Two cities in two days and I think we are done with cities for a while. Our overall impression of Montreal was that it was a bit dirty and run down and needed a bit of money spending on it (the downtown is very shiny but you don’t have to go far for it to get pretty grubby). One thing I did like about Montreal though is they have their own version of London’s Boris Bikes.

In all the cities we have visited in Canada we have noticed a lot of homeless people. There seem to be a lot more than London which has surprised us.

We then set out for Algonquin Provincial Park and got stuck in a massive traffic jam for the next hour. We only made it as far as Renfrew (about a 100km short) where we free camped for the night.