Tremblant and Montreal As part of our ongoing mission to see as many bits of Canada as possible, this year we’ve decided to visit the largest French speaking city outside of France - Montreal. However, as I’m not a big fan of big cities, we decided to spend the first half of the week in the village of Tremblant, which can be found 70 miles or so to the north-west of Montreal.
Clouds Although this looks a lot like snow, it's actually clouds from 35,000 feet. This was pretty much the view we had all the way from Gatwick to Montreal and proved to be a good indicator of what we could expect for the rest of the week.
Tremblant So having flown into Montreal, we picked up a hire car and drove directly to Tremblant, some 70 miles to the north-west of Montreal. It would probably have been a scenic drive had it not been dark. Being Sunday evening, we also passed an enormous amount of traffic heading back into Montreal.On Monday morning we set out to explore the village. This is a view across the Promenade Deslauriers.
Lettuce These are used extensively as decoration throughout the village. They look nice in macro close-up too.
Tremblant A view down the Rue des Remparts, which is pretty much what passes for the high street in Tremblant. The village is mainly pedestrianised, which is nice.
Tremblant A view across the Place des Voyageurs.
Mountains We got the gondola to the top of Mont Tremblant (875m) to have a look at the view, only to discover that it was cloudy. This should be a fabulous view across the Laurentian mountains.I say "mountains" because that's what they're called. But I'd be more inclined to call them "big hills" myself.
Walking So we started walking back down to the village. The scenery is looking very much like it did when we were in Nova Scotia last year, i.e. foggy. Doh!
Maple Leaf We were fortunate that the leaves were still changing colour, even well into October.
Colours It made for some wonderful scenery.
View Eventually we decended from the cloud layer and got our first view of Tremblant village and Lake Tremblant beyond.
Night A view of a tree reflected in Mirror Lake.
Mountains Again Woke up early on Tuesday (thanks mainly to the five hour time difference) to discover that the sun was out. So I decided to head out for a walk up Mont Tremblant on my own (as Judith was still tired from our walk down on Monday).As you can see, the views have improved greatly.
Trees It was strange walking on my own. It took 90 minutes to reach the top and I didn't see a single other person. Also didn't see any bears, which was nice.
Deer Saw a few deer though. This was as close as I managed to get.
View As I climb higher, the views get better.
Waterfall On Wednesday morning I climbed the mountain on my own again (no views today - very cloudy/misty). In the afternoon we went for a drive round the Mont Tremblant National Park. This is a waterfall we walked to.
Leaves Lots of colourful leaves still to be seen.
Focus It's always nice to have a picture of the hire car. In this instance, a Ford Focus sedan (auto). Not the worst hire car I've had, but probably in the bottom half of the table. Just as well we didn't need to drive it much, only covering about 300 miles in total.The guy at the Hertz counter asked if we wanted to upgrade to a Volvo S80. I said I wasn't bothered about paying extra to drive something we have in Europe anyway, to which he replied "but it's not like European Volvos - it runs on petrol". I can only assume that he thinks all European cars run on either diesel or electricity.
Lake Tremblant A nice view down Lake Tremblant. It would have been much improved by a blue sky and fluffy white clouds.
Boat A boat on Lake Tramblant.
Chair A picture of me in the Place Saint Bernard in Tremblant.
La Diable Apparently "microbrasserie" is actually French for "microbrewery". They had some nice beer in here. Highly recommended for a drink and a bite to eat in Tremblant. Having said that, the food was excellent everywhere we ate in Tremblant.
Chapel Saint Bernard's Chapel just before sunset.
Grand Prix 1 The quickest way up (and down) Mont Tremblant on foot is to follow the route of the gondola straight up the mountainside - a 600 meter climb over a distance of about two miles. This is also the route of the annual Grand Prix des Couleurs, where locals race to the top. This year the race was won in 25 minutes and 6 seconds. On Thursday morning it took me an hour to get to the top, but I did stop to take some pictures on the way.
Deer This is one of them.Anyway that was us done in Tremblant. On Thursday afternoon we headed back into Montreal.
Metro The easiest way to get around Montreal is on the Metro, which is quick, reliable and cheap (so not much like the London Underground then).I was surprised to see that the trains have tyres rather than the more usually observed steel wheels. I think this allows the tunnels to be built with steeper gradients. Seems to work pretty well.
Basilique Notre Dame One of the first places we visited was the Basilique Notre Dame.
Basilique Notre Dame Very impressive.
Tower View The next place we went to was the old Olympic Village, where the 1976 games were held. This is a view towards downtown Montreal from the observation deck of The Tower, which is the 175 meter centrepiece of the Olympic village.
Tower View Another view from The Tower. Downtown Montreal on the left. Mont Royal on the right.
The old Olympic velodrome has been converted into a sort of zoo thing with four different climates - Tropical, Laurentian Forest, St Lawrence Marine and Arctic/Antarctic. Moderately interesting, but it's still a zoo and the animals still don't look that happy (especially the beaver).
Duck A duck at the Biodome.
L'Oratoire Saint Joseph An impressive building. Shame about the sky.
L'Oratoire Saint Joseph Judith outside L'Oratoire Saint Joseph.
Sunset This was as close as we came to seeing a sunset, as we were leaving the Parc du Mont Royal.
Curry Popped into Le Taj for a curry. Lucky we turned up early because it was a very popular place, and rightly so. We had a most excellent meal. Highly recommended. Le Taj can be found at 2077 Stanley Street.
Cathedrale... ...Marie-Reine-du-Monde. Not sure what the building on the right is.
Champ de Mars Good illumination. Unlike almost all other cities in North America, they've got some good looking, European-style architecture in Montreal.
Marche Bonsecours Another one of those good looking buildings.
Biosphere Spent an interesting couple of hours in the Biosphere on Ile Sainte-Helene. This is one of the few remaining buildings from Expo '67, where it was originally the pavillion of the United States. The Biosphere is 206 feet tall.
Biosphere From inside the Bioshpere.
Biosphere A view of the Biosphere from Ile Notre-Dame.
Skyline A view of the Montreal skyline from Ile Notre-Dame.
Casino Also on Ile Notre Dame is the Montreal Casino, which was originally the French pavillion at Expo '67. Had a nice buffet brunch in here.
Hockey Tried to get tickets to the ice hockey at the Bell Center on Saturday night, but the only seats they had left were behind the goal (sounds promising) with a view partially obscured by a cameraman (not so promising). I might have still been tempted if the tickets hadn't been ninety quid. And they say that football is too expensive.So we ended up doing the next best thing and watched the game in The Cage sports bar at the stadium with about 500 hockey fans. Quite atmospheric.Incidentally, replica Montreal Canadiens hockey shirts are CAD350, which is about 180 quid! Yikes!!
Grand Prix 2 Sunday morning. Our last day and just time to pop back to Ile Notre-Dame with the hire car for a couple of laps of the F1 circuit. This is a picture of our Focus parked in pole position. Awesome. My best lap was 8 minutes 50 seconds. I think I could have improved on that if there hadn't been a 30kph speed limit. Still impressive though. And the chicane just before the Wall of Champions is incredibly tight. It's easy to see now why so many people have ended up in the wall.Well that's it. Another holiday over. The weather was pretty consistently poor, but we still had a great time and will look forward to going back to Montreal and Tremblant in the future.