Sunday in Montreal

Sunday, May 27, 2018--Montreal

Today just happened to be Free Museum Day in Montreal with most museums having free admission.  I had told Wes that since I would be here for 5 more days we would do whatever he wanted to do today, and he chose to try to see some museums while they where free.  Therefore, we made a plan to go to three museums.

We headed to a nearby bus stop to catch a bus that would take us to the first museum, the Montreal Science Center.  That experience of getting there taught me that while here I need to try to use the Metro vs. buses.  It was a slow Sunday morning, but the bus arrived empty and 15 minutes late.  Then the driver left to go to a toilet or somewhere and came back about 20 minutes later.  So we lost some time due to the bus being far off schedule.  When we left, it was only about 10 minutes until the next bus was due to arrive at that stop! 

What we didn't know about Free Museum Day was how this system works at most of the museums.  It's common to let lines form and to admit only a few people at a time.  At the science museum, there were maybe 200 people in line ahead of us.  And after waiting 10 minutes or so, no one from the line had been admitted.  We had already seen a long line outside a museum on our way to there on the bus.  So we quickly abandoned the plan to visit museums and headed out to explore town. 

We wandered down a section of Rue Notre-Dame which is a brick street with small shops--a very quaint and old area of the center of town.  Then we went to the nearby Town Hall to see it from the outside.  At that point, we decided to take the Metro line from there to the stop nearest the last museum we had planned to visit.  We thought it would be a way to explore another part of town and just check on the possibility of getting into the Museum of Fine Arts.

The area where we got off the Metro is a very fine one with Rue Sherbrooke being lined with exclusive stores, many fine old mansions still in existence, new office buildings, very exclusive apartment buildings, and new and old hotels including the Ritz Carlton.  Fortunately, when we got to the museum, people were walking right in.  That is probably because this is a HUGE museum, because families with small children were choosing other museums, and because some persons interested in art were choosing smaller museums that they normally miss due to high admission prices. 

Anyway, we spent about 2 1/2 hours in the museum.  It has a very nice collection that mainly consists of art from impressionism to the present (with a big section related to more recent art) plus special halls related to art produced by Inuits, Montreal artists, etc. 

When we came out, it was about 13:45, so we went into a Subway sandwich shop to eat before checking on another museum.  However, it started raining about the time we were leaving there.  We decided to abandon plans to go to another museum and to take the metro back to our hotel until the rain passed.  Both of us used that time to do some research related to our travel plans for tomorrow--Wes' trip back to Texas and my move the the Airbnb apartment I have rented.  I also did some research related to getting to the airport early next Saturday morning, since my plane leaves at 9:05.

By late afternoon, there was no more rain and the sun was peaking out some.  Wes announced that he was going out for about 2 hours.  After he left, I decided to go out, too, rather than just sit in the room.  I explored the area near our hotel beyond what we had already seen.  Tomorrow, I will move about 4 miles away to another neighborhood, so I figured it was best to explore this area more thoroughly before leaving it.  It's a nice district mostly filled with lots of people.  But one thing that stands out and is true about inner city areas of most major metro areas like this is the number of beggars, number of people who seem to have some mental illness problems, and number of people who may be drug users.  Both of us got back to the hotel around 7:15 or so, and we just stayed inside for the rest of the night.