Canada: Montreal, Quebec - September 2009
Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation made from a post originally written in French. My apologies for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have been generated during the process. If you are reading French, click on the French flag below to access the original and correct text:
Français I love Montreal. There are skyscrapers, maples, squirrels and pumpkins. They speak French, but you feel like you're in an American TV show. So much fun!
Oh... it's high!
Montreal is first and foremost a North American city. With glass and concrete buildings that make you dizzy. But... none of them goes beyond the hillock of Mount Royal Park (232 meters) from where I took the first picture below.
In fact, it's more than a hillock. It is "the mountain" as Montrealers say.
Vroom!
In Montreal, there are endless avenues, straight, that intersect at right angles. We see very big cars and real cars trucks huge, shiny fire trucks flashing everywhere and cop cars racing by with their sirens blaring...
Wow, this is America. Like in the TV series.
But among these vehicles "seen on TV", my favorites remain the pretty yellow buses with "schoolchildren" written on them.
cucurbits
In Montreal, we are already preparing for Halloween ...
It's pumpkin season.
There are cucurbits (squash, that is) of all shapes, sizes and colors, from almost black mauve to dark green through subtle shades of orange, at all fruit and vegetable stores.
But it was at the Jean-Talon market, in the Little Italy neighborhood, that I saw the biggest ones. Real Cinderella pumpkins! I love them.
facades
What is pleasing about Montreal's urban landscape is the variety of architecture and facades. The residential streets in the center, especially in the Plateau district (a district that has become "bobo" and overpriced), present these typical alignments of pretty brick houses, with iron stairs as stoops.
In the chic districts, there are also rich buildings, like English mansions. Sometimes quite kitsch, we must admit...
Nature
Montreal may be a big city (1.8 million people, not counting the inner suburbs, according to my travel guide), but it doesn't feel suffocated by concrete. The parks and green spaces are numerous and vast.
Many streets are lined with trees, especially in residential areas. The main species here is the maple, of course.
This is the view from my window on the street side.
I like "my" maple. But it is still far from having the fiery color of the trees planted in the small park at the entrance of old Montreal.
With all these parks and trees, Montreal is a squirrel's paradise! In Mount Royal Park, which is a real forest in the heart of the city (I'll come back to that in a future post), it's impossible not to see them. These little balls of hair never stop crossing the paths. Hop, hop, hop... three little hops and they are gone.
But these squirrels are not shy at all. I imagine that people must feed them... In any case, they do not hesitate to come and pose for the tourists!
Too much fun, I tell you!
🙂
