Traveling Back to Montreal--Our Last Stop

Saturday, May 26, 2018--Quebec City to Montreal via Trois Riveres

It was another sunny and warm day as we slowly made our way from Quebec City to Montreal.  We left the hotel around 10:00.  About 11:30, we arrived in Trois Riveres, a very nice town on the St. Lawrence River.  It's an old town with some really nice older churches, schools, homes, etc. from the 1700s and 1800s.  And it has a large downtown area indicating that it has been a large town for some time--a downtown that is much larger than one might expect for a metro area of 126,000 people.  We pulled off to see the campus of the University of Quebec at Trois Riveres.  It's a rather simple and fairly new campus.  Then we walked the downtown area and its nearby historical areas.  Finally, on the way out of town, we stopped at Costco to buy gasoline and to eat a quick hot dog.

We arrived in Montreal about 15:00.  It is a big city with lots of road construction.  We were quite tired when we arrived at the hotel--Wes from driving and me from navigating the whole way.  Wes drove our car down the VERY NARROW driveway to the back of the hotel and maneuvered it into a parking space, and we got our room at the Hotel St. Andre.  It's an unusual room called a double-double.  What they have done is to create larger rooms by removing the wall between two rooms.  So our room has two beds, two bathrooms, and two doors (although one is closed permanently) to the hallway.  It's really rather nice.

The location of the hotel couldn't be better.  Just half a block from it is the "hot" street in town--the section of St. Catherine Street called the Gay Village which actually serves as the entertainment area for all of Montreal with bars, clubs, theaters, restaurants, etc.  The street has hanging strings of balls in various colors to create a long distance color pattern of a rainbow flag.  And further up St. Catherine is the opera house, the CAM, and other major destinations.

After settling into the room, we went walking along both stretches of St. Catherine Street.  Because it was warm and sunny and Saturday, crowds were out and the sidewalk tables were full.  There were bachelorette and bachelor parties wandering up and down the street along with a mix of all kinds of people.  It was just a day for people to be out among and watching other people while enjoying the great weather.

We needed to return our rental car to the airport, so we returned to the hotel to leave.  First, it was difficult to get the car out of the back parking lot.  I had to stand in front and give Wes directions to become aligned with the extra narrow lane between our building and the one next door.  Then someone started to try to drive in off the street and I had to stop them (since we couldn't back up through that area).  Eventually, we got out and on our way with cars backing up on the street behind the lady we asked to wait to enter until we were out.

It took about 40 minutes to get to the airport because of heavy traffic and detours caused by the rebuilding of the expressway (Hwy 20) that goes out there.  When we finally arrived, we went to a nearby gas station to fill up only to find that it was closed.  I used my phone to locate another gas station about a mile away, and we went there.  Fortunately, it was open.  But when we arrived at the rental car lot, the entrance was blocked by a large truck and it looked closed.  Wes went to the office and found they were in the process of closing for the day.   The car wasn't due for another hour, but rather than stay later and check us in, they asked us to take the car to the Park and Pay lot and leave it there.  So we had to find that location and leave the car there.  Fortunately, they were familiar with the process, and it went smoothly.  Also, their van gave us a ride to the terminal where we bought bus tickets to return to town.  But the bus had to deal with the same detours and expressway reconstruction that we had faced going out there.  So about 2 1/2 hours after leaving the hotel to go to the airport, we made it back to the hotel.  What an exhausting experience it had been!!

We still walked the nearby section of St. Catherine again before coming to the room.  It was still active.  Only the shops were closed.  The bars, clubs, theaters, etc., were very alive with people enjoying the slightly cool, but still shirtsleeve, weather of the evening.

We were back in the hotel by 21:00 and ready by bed an hour later.  It had been a long day.

Note:  We had traveled slightly over 6000 km in the car.  That's about 3750 miles!!  It was way too much driving.  I would recommend that anyone coming up this way make it into two trips--one for Montreal and Quebec City and another, flying into Halifax, for Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick with the New Brunswick portion restricted only to the coastal area near Nova Scotia.