After an eventful night we get up at 7.30, eat breakfast and get to the metro to take us to the Olympic park. Today we will continue our use of the Montreal museum pass to visit as many included sites as possible.
After a 30 min metro ride we get off and walk to the Biodome next to the Olympic Stadium for the 1976 Olympics. Sadly the whole system with the museum pass is not so efficient and it takes another 20 minutes for us to get inside. The Biodome has four different climate /geo zones: tropical, sub arctic, Laurentian forest ( temperate), and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We start in the tropical dome which houses a rainforest with ara’s, crocodiles and small monkeys. We also spot frogs in may bright colours, a snake and bats. This was the only non-Canadian zone.
Next is the Gulf with its mussels, sea stars, sea gulls, fish and other sea birds. We continue to the sub arctic which is really cold and houses several species of penguin and puffins. Although everything is new and roomy the birds don’t look too happy. The last is the Laurentian maple forest, with beavers, otters and raccoons. Meanwhile it has gotten really busy so we leave for our next stop in the parc.
We circle the Olympic stadium and come to the Insectarium. This is an interesting exploration into the world of insects. We get to see as flies, climb walls and squeeze through tiny halls.
There are a couple of different live insects but the main room is a calideoscope of insects, mainly butterflies sorted by color pinned to a wall.
What is lovely, is the big butterfly green house with hundreds of different butterflies flapping around. Zeno holds out his hand in the hope that one will sit on it but this sadly for Zeno doesn’t happen.
Just next door is the huge botanical garden of Montreal. This would also be included in our pass but it’s free until May for everyone since most of the garden is barren at the moment. We were very lucky in our timing, because unbeknownst to us, the protest yesterday was a three day strike by blue collar workers including the workers of all things we will visit today.
The garden has a nice Chinese garden which brings back memories from our trip to Suzhou. The alpine rock gardens are also nice as they don’t need as much plants as the other parts. And we end in the restaurant serving nice vegetarian lunch, refilling our energy.
Just across the road from the parc lies the château Dufresne. As all the chateaux in Canada, this isn’t a castle but a mansion, but a very elegant one. Built in 1915 in the Beaux Arts style, the second floor is the most beautiful with most rooms still richly decorated. Cleo does a treasure hunt, finding the hidden animals and then drawing them, which extends our trip a little bit.
We saw a lot of runners when we took the metro this morning and Tim finds that their is some kind of race on the island where we’re heading to next. But since a lot of time has passed since this morning we hope we can freely move around.
Hordes of runners travel in our opposite directions, so this looks promising. When we arrive the last runners are finishing and everything has clearly wound down. Next to the metro station is the Biosphere. A building from the 1967 world expo. It houses an environmental museum telling us about the environment and all the dangers of climate change. It’s fairly interactive but we’re a bit tired, so we let the children do their thing and read some disturbing and depression children stories.
It has been another sunny day, one which we have enjoyed without even taking our jackets. We enjoy some more sun as we walk to the viewpoint on the western side of the island. It gives a great view of the Montreal skyline. It’s almost 15.00 when we call it a day. We take the metro back, do some groceries and relax before our final day tomorrow.
