2010 Blogs

I'll just wait for a few minutes

08/10/2010

Sylvain suggested some places to visit starting with Mont Royal, the mountain in Montréal (Montréal is Middle French, Mont Royal is modern French, but it's the same title: Royal Mountain). I'd forgotten the memory card for my camera, so I was very limited on the pictures that I could take. I took the Metro to the Parc du Mont-Royal. The Park has both historic and natural heritage status from the government. It is one of the largest greenspaces in the city.

After I checked out the view of the St. Lawrence River, I headed towards the Olympic Stadium. I could see the tower. A couple of times I stopped at a bus stop and planned to wait for a ride to the Stadium. I'd get impatient and start walking again. It was 12 miles from Mont Royal to the Olympic Stadium and I didn't need the bus.

I finally made it (I guess the fitness class was useful). Sylvain told me that taxpayers finally finished paying off the 1976 stadium just a few years ago (2006). I looked up the information later and saw that it is the second most expensive stadium ever built at a cost of 1.61 billion Canadian dollars. Inside the tower is another funicular with an observatory at 585 feet.

The Jardin Botanique and Insectarium de Montréal are right across the street. I had lunch in the gardens (I'm lying, it was really dessert and water). The gardens were conceived in 1931 to put the unemployed to work. In the gardens you will find Mali, the grass sheepdog. She is inspired by the sheepdog from The Man Who Planted Trees. You can see the short animated film about a man who sows seeds and acorns to re-forest a desolate area here: L'homme qui plantait des arbres. (I think this video is in English, I cannot download anything in this location to check. My apologies if it is not.)

Mali, Botanical Gardens

Mali, Montréal's entry in the 2009 Hamamatsu International Mosaiculture event, is an invitation to reconnect with nature. Mali guards the Courtyard of the Senses. The Courtyard is filled with plants to touch and smell. I learned to smell a plant--you rub your fingers on the plant and then sniff.

In the area of the Olympic Park, you'll also find the Biodôme de Montréal. It was not open because of a labor dispute, so I could not go and check it out. I needed a rest, so I was on my way to the Metro station for Old Montréal. I passed the Aréna Maurice-Richard which features memorabilia of Maurice "Rocket" Richard, the Montréal Canadiens hockey legend. Two years ago, I saw the film Maurice Richard in the Hispanic Francophone Film Festival Series on the IUE campus and it was nice to be familiar with some of the history of Québec.

-Dorotha