The Biodome is in the shadow of the Olympic Tower...it's a beautiful spot...the Biodome has 4 environments highlighted and explained with wonderful exhibits...
The tropical forest was our favorite...lots of cool beasties and summertime weather...
Gail and Ben getting to know a school of piranhas...
This picture was tough to get because of the dark (and no flash allowed), but it was an anaconda in a tank full of fish...every time I've seen anacondas in zoos they're sleeping in a ball in the corner...this guy was hunting for food, and swimming all over the tank...at this point, it was checking out Ben...
Ben loved the caimans in this exhibit...
On our way out of the exhibit, this roseate spoonbill hopped up on the railing and walked along with us for a bit...
After the Biodome, I programmed my Garmin to find a restaurant that we had read about as having superb native Quebecois food in one of the neighborhoods near the Olympic park...I never would have taken a chance on trying to find it on my own (with Ben in tow), but the Garmin makes it easy to navigate any city as though I live there...we got a great meal in a fun locals' place (I loved the tortiere!)...
Our hotel was at the edge of Chinatown, with a nice view of the Notre Dame Cathedral from our room, and just a short walk to Old Town, our favorite part of any visit to Montreal...we checked in and unpacked, explored Chinatown a bit, and did some shopping before heading back to our room...
Our hotel had a pool, of course, and we swam every day...Ben is taking lessons and is getting better all the time, but he made real gains this week in our swims...he did some swimming with his "noodle", but also did some free-swimming and some underwater practice...
I had to do the swim-around picture with the camera of all of us in the pool...please note the sign behind us that prohibits occupation of the pool by more than 75 people...this in a pool about the size of our living room...
Ben likes swimming...
My camera works underwater, so I have to take pictures like this when I can...seriously, I have to...
Ben is so much more comfortable in the water now, and loves being tossed around and splashing...
After swimming, we had some time before our first dinner (we're into food, so we planned a range of cool dining experiences, and Ben was perfect...ish...well, perfect for a 6 year old)...so we went back up to our room and had some drinks and snacks that we'd picked up at the small market near our hotel while we dried off and talked about the day...
We got enough stuff on our shopping trip in the neighborhood to stock the mini-fridge sufficiently for our whole visit...
We got some great local pate and cheeses...
Ben liked the nuts, and they helped to refuel him after a long day of walking and swimming...
Moe, as always, overdid it with our table wine...
Canadian coke tastes better than American coke because they use real sugar...the bottle also makes me feel as though I'm having a hulk moment...we ate our first dinner in our hotel restaurant...Ben loved his lemon chicken, we had exquisite calamari and crispy spinach...and we all fell in love with lychee...
The next morning we went to the Marche Jean Talon...it's an amazing market that has convinced us to rent a place with a kitchen the next time that we come, so that we can take advantage of the bounty that this place has to offer by cooking some meals for ourselves...this butcher had meat from an incredible array of wild-beasties...it was a great place to visit on our Thanksgiving day, a holiday that we associate closely with family and food...
The seafood place had sealife that Ben had never seen before, but was willing to try...he was great about trying all sorts of new foods during our visit...
The produce was incredible...tons of fresh food the likes of which we never see in upstate NY, and some that seemed impossible, including beautiful tomatoes at the end of November....
And great peppers of all shapes and sizes and colors...
Fresh and local apples in about 30 different varieties were available...
We stopped off during our rounds of the market for some crepes in a place where we could watch the maker produce our food while he told Ben about what/how he was doing it...Ben's crepe had bananas and nutella (a chocolate and hazelnut-butter spread that is yummy!), Gail's had egg and cheese and spinach, mine had apple and pear and caramel...it looks like Ben is planning an attack on Gail's crepe in this picture
There was a honey farmer who had honeys of varying colors from light to dark, and wax and pollen and all sorts of yummies associated with bees...
Another seafood place that we visited had live escargots (which Ben then tried later that night in our super supper choice, a fancy French place) and dozens (or hundreds) of other kinds of seafood displayed, and a friendly guy who told/showed us all of them as we walked around...
Tiny octopi...
Really big octopi...
and even some fish that Ben was a little freaked out by...
Our next stop in the market had the most incredible array of cheeses and meats and such...including 4 kinds of feta...
They also had about 20 different kinds of fancy salt from all over the world, including salt in colors ranging from snow-white to black as night, with Himalayan pink salt somewhere in the middle...
After a fantabulous Italian lunch near the market, we went to the Planetarium, which had a great show on the longest night, which tied in to some mythologies that we've been reading with Ben recently...
After the Planetarium, we went back to the hotel for another refreshing swim...Ben loves to jump and then swim to the edge...nowadays all by himself, although he likes me close by...just in case...
He is basically fearless and willing to try anything that we put in front of him...after swimming and some drinks/snacks, we headed out to one of the top french restaurants in the city and had a full-on fancy-pants meal...Ben tried escargots and salmon and bison and shrimp and scallops...he loved the creme brulee that I had, and went crazy for his personal-sized lemon meringue pie...
The next day we headed into the Old Town to do some exploring...
We went first to the Archeological Museum, which boasts some great interactive technologies, and simply amazing exhibits...they have preserved archeological digs of the ancient city of Montreal, from hundreds of years ago, beneath the museum, and we could wander through them and look at the relics in place...
We moved from there to the Science Center to see an Imax movie (the Wild Ocean) and check out some of their neat and highly interactive exhibits...we also had a bite of lunch at the in-house cafe...please note the name of the place..."Cafe Arsenik"...we got through the lunch fine...
This exhibit let kids explore various ways of measuring/perceiving energy and the whole place drove Ben almost insane with pleasure with the, I-can-touch-it-osity of the exhibits...
On the way back to our hotel after the Science Center, we stopped in to see the inside of the Notre Dame Cathedral...it's beautiful and enormous and ornate and a spectacle, but Ben was perhaps most impressed by the giant clam shell by the door for holding holy water...
The amazing woodwork and lights and gilding were all impressive too, but they weren't a big shell from a bivalve...
Back in the hotel, after a fun Mexican meal, with guacamole made at the table (and awesome ceviche), we had some serious reading time before bed...
Our hotel lobby had some cool bridges and mini-pagodas and koi...
Ben loved the koi...and the koi loved him (at least as much as they loved everyone else)...
We finished off our visit with another exploration of chinatown and a great dim sum lunch, where Ben tried a bit of everything...
We stopped at the duty-free shop at the border to re-supply on some booze and were home by the early afternoon...what a great vacation!
We were able to balance fun and learning and history and great food and swimming in a wonderful city only 2 hours from our home...
