Sorry about how long it’s taken to do this! Wrapping up this school year has kept me busy, and I still am not feeling 100% well. Anyway, without further ado:
Forgot to post this picture–we passed this building in Chinatown on our way back to the Metro on Saturday afternoon:

Not your usual graffiti!
The next day we visited Pointe-a-Calliere, which is the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History. It’s a fascinating place located near the river, where the city was founded, and the museum buildings are actually built over the top of in situ archaeological digs. You can go down to the dig levels and see the remains of civilization from pre-history through the mid-1800s. Our pictures didn’t turn out well as it was dim and we couldn’t use a flash, but if you go to the website you can get the general idea.
After lunch we headed to the Redpath Museum, which is a natural history/anthropology museum on the campus of McGill University. It’s in a really cool Victorian building, and the neat thing is that Derek and I went there while on our honeymoon–it was fun to take the girls there all these years later. On our first visit Derek had taken a picture of me in front of a slice of a petrified tree, so of course he had to take another:

The girls had to stand there too.

Almost nineteen years later
All the little papers you see are telling what was happening in history when the tree ring was forming–it’s an interesting thing to see. The museum is small (and free, bless them!) but has an incredibly diverse and fascinating collection:

From huge scary crabs...

to rocks and shells...
(I love the old identification card.)

to fossils and skeletons...


to stuffed animals...

to fragments of cunieform and ancient coins

to mummies...

to antique Japanese armor...

to old African instruments.
Truly an interesting place to visit! There was a Darwin exhibition going on also, who of course they believe was a demi-god at the very least, but it was small and not too annoying.
We had a not so fun adventure on the way back to the hotel, as there was a gas leak or something in one of the Metro stations and we had to flee to the surface. And then we had to walk, and walk, and walk, and walk, and…you get the idea. We must have walked three or four miles by the time we found another Metro station that would take us where we needed to get to. It was really cold that day too–a lot colder than the day before. However, we made it back to the hotel safely and thawed out in the hot tub, so it all was fine in the end.
Monday was our last day in Montreal. After our Metro misadventure the day before, we decided to forgo public transport and drove to the other side of the city to visit the Biodome. This was the place that Lizzy most wanted to go–it has the flora and fauna of four different ecosystems: tropical forest, Laurentian forest (apparently it’s a forest somewhere in Quebec province), St. Lawrence marine, and Arctic/Antarctic. In the tropical forest there were some of the cutest monkeys we’ve ever seen:

Look at the tiny little faces!
In the Laurentian forest and St. Lawrence marine environment there were more familiar creatures, like alligators, birds, ducks, and beavers. One neat thing was that you could see the beavers and their dam from above, but as you walked around and down, you could see them through an aquarium-type window swimming into the dam from below. There also were crazy little birds that would dive way down in the water:

Diving bird

Another crazy bird
I assume they were getting food, but I’m not sure what it was! The penguins were very funny to watch waddling, sliding, and swimming:

After they came out of the water they would walk around with their flippers/arms stretched out like that, I suppose so their arms didn’t freeze to their bodies.
The Biodome is in Olympic Parc, so before we left town we decided to go up the funicular to the Montreal Tower Observatory. Derek and I had also done this on our honeymoon, so we knew there was quite a view:

The Biodome from above as we were ascending.

Looking towards the city center.

Other Olympic Parc buildings in the foreground and the St. Lawrence river in the distance
We headed home after that–all in all it was a fun vacation!
~Amy











