Montreal, Part 2

On Monday, we slept in and then started our day with lunch at a sports bar in Old Montreal.  After lunch, we headed up to see St. Joseph's Oratory.  It is the largest church in Canada and the largest shrine in the world dedicated to St. Joseph.  We've been to many churches around the world and usually most of the people there are just tourists visiting, like us.  But this time, there were actually a lot of people there in deep prayer, and we even saw someone crawling up the steps on their knees.  The only other place we've seen so much prayer was in Fatima, Portugal.  

Pigeon joined us!  

After the Oratory, we stopped by Fairmount Bagel for a snack.  Montreal is known for its bagels and this is one of two places that it is known for.  My reaction?  It tastes like a bagel.  So, nothing special in my opinion.  Mark agreed.

After our bagel snack, we rested at the hotel for a while and then headed back to Jardin Nelson for a fruit plate and some drinks.  

We chose Dolcetto (in Old Montreal again) for dinner.  This place is basically an Italian tapas restaurant.  We had a few small plates, including roasted almonds with truffle, lobster and fennel cannelloni, a garlic shrimp dish with asparagus and pancetta, and a mini pizza with prosciutto, spinach, and cheese.  The pizza was great.  The rest was just okay.  

On Tuesday, we woke up and headed to Olive + Gourmando for breakfast.  This was actually our third time trying to go to this place!  It gets very busy.  We each had an apple turnover and we split the granola with maple yogurt and fruit.  The granola was so good!  The maple yogurt was not sour or bitter at all, and had just a hint of maple.  This place also had yummy fresh-squeezed OJ.  Mark had a cappucino.  

After breakfast we headed back over to the Fine Arts Museum, but we went inside this time!  We saw some interesting art, including:

I think my nieces would love this stool for their bedroom:

My favorite thing at the museum was Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon's installation, Dreamscapes.  This was basically various floor to ceiling screens interspersed throughout a huge room, with different surreal, dreamlike (or nightmarish!) videos playing on each screen.  Mark described it as feeling dystopian, because Mark is really sophisticated and can regularly use artsy, cultural phrases to describe his various impressive observations.  (Note:  A portion of the previous sentence may have been written by Mark.)

After wandering around the museum for a while we went back to the Deville Diner to get the Toasted Marshmallow milkshake!  It was good, but not as amazing as I was expecting.  It kind of tasted like an Ovaltine milkshake.  

Mark had a malted milkshake.

We stopped for some photos at the Palais des congres de Montreal.  This is the city's convention center.  

We went back to the hotel to rest for a while and then went for a walk down to the Old Port.  

We had a decent view of Habitat 67.  This is an apartment complex that was built for Expo 67, the 1967 World's Fair.  It is considered an architectural wonder, although many people think it's terribly ugly.  What do you think?

After our walk, we had dinner at Modavie, another restaurant in Old Montreal.  I had spaghetti bolognese and Mark had steak.  It was good comfort food.  We stopped back at our favorite spot - Jardin Nelson - for drinks after dinner (Mark:  Um, I had a beer...she's having a fruit drink with no alcohol...so you all can put down the phone to the authorities).  

Postscript from Mark:  OK, before you wonder why we would go to a sports bar in Old Montreal...you need to understand the look that a certain someone gets if she hasn't eaten.  I had to make a quick decision to save my life.  Worked!  Although 3 or 4 passers-by were not so lucky!  The charges were dropped.

At the Oratory, we really wanted to re-create the statue of the St. Joseph carrying the cross...but, alas, despite multiple efforts, we were unable to secure a large stone cross.  Maybe next time we'll plan better.  

Now, scroll back up and look at the monkey sculpture.  This is what happens when monkey helpers go bad!  But, I still want a bunch of them around the office. They could wear little hats and bring me coffee.