Click on images below to enlarge:
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| Byblos Le Petit Cafe
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| Byblos Le Petit Cafe has a nice corner location and many windows to allow
watching life pass by.
| Byblos's interior was nicely casual.
| The room in Cafe Byblos in which we sat.
| Orange juice, sweetened bread with poppy seeds, coffee, assorted herbs,
feta, walnuts, radishes, koukou (Middle Eastern omelette), halva (jam of
sesame seeds and honey), rose petal jam, and assorted breads and pita.
Some dishes we ate (e.g., croissant) aren't pictured.
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| Old Montreal (Vieux-Montreal)
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Place Viger, its peak peeking out from down the street and beyond the
park. It used to be an elaborate railway-hotel, similar to those I've
seen elsewhere in Canada.
Know how you can tell a city has a lot of
history? By finding buildings like this that good maps and guidebooks
don't bother listing because they're too common.
| Maison Pierre du Calvet, built nearly three hundred years ago. It now
houses a restaurant, bed and breakfast, and hostel, about which my dad has
some interesting stories acquired from reading tripadvisor.
| Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours (Our Lady of Perpetual Help Chapel).
| The inside of the chapel is filled with stuff, the most surprising of
which is the small models of ships hanging from the ceiling. There are
several in this picture, but you'll probably have to view the full sized
image to spot them. The chapel, next to the waterfront, is a place
sailors have frequently come to pray.
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| I tried to take another photograph of the chapel's interior to make the
ships more obvious. Three are in a line in this picture. However, it
came out so fuzzy, I'd advise you to use the previous photo for
ship spotting.
| Intricate stained glass windows line the chapel's walls.
The incense and the lighting made the church a very magical place.
| The other side of the Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours welcomes sailors
back from the sea.
| A street (rue St-Paul Est) in Old Montreal.
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| Marche Bonsecours (Bonsecours Market). The marketplace inside has many
nice boutiques selling items like stunning glass figures, an exotic
xylophone, paintings, ceramics, and clothing. Good quality stuff.
| Marche Bonsecours looks much more imposing from the waterfront.
| One marina by the Vieux-Port-de-Montreal (Old Port). The clock tower, to
the right, was closed. In fact, likely because it was a slightly chilly
weekday, the port was nearly abandoned.
| Along the waterfront, I spotted a simple clue. The solution is in white on
white in the next sentence -- highlight it to read it.
Gare Maritime. It's the name of a travel magazine.
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| Typical solid stone Old Montreal buildings. The Edifice Allan (Allan
Building) is on the right; I don't know what building is on the left.
| The burned out husk that used to be the Hopital General des Soeurs-Grises
(General Hospital of the Gray Nuns).
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| Olive & Gourmando
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The understated facade of Olive y Gourmando.
Boulangerie means bakery.
| The lively interior of Olive y Gourmando. I love the lamps.
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| More Old Montreal
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| Centre d'Histoire de Montreal (Montreal History Centre) resides in a cute
former fire station.
| Place Royale, the oldest (and probably the most drab) public square in
Montreal. Across the square is the Vielle Douane (Old Customs House).
| Our first view of the Basilique Notre-Dame-de-Montreal (Our Lady of
Montreal Basilica) made it look large but really only hinted of its
grandeur.
| With our next view of the basilica -still from the side-, we caught sight
of one of its towers high above the previously photographed structure.
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| The front of the basilica. My Fodor's guidebook says, "James O'Donnell,
the Protestant architect who designed this 3,800-seat temple, was so
pleased with his handiwork that he became Catholic." Heh.
| The Place d'Armes. Across the square is the Bank of Montreal, quite an
architectural contrast to the basilica immediately behind me.
| A closer look at the statue in the Place d'Armes.
| The interior dome in the Bank of Montreal.
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| Vieux Seminaire (Old Seminary), built in 1685 by Sulpician priests. The
order still occupies the building.
| The (old) Montreal Stock Exchange, now used as a theater. It's the main
English-language theater in Montreal. (Since the majority of people in
Montreal speak French, most theaters do productions in French.)
| The Caverhill Building, often described on the web as exuberant.
I
learned that fact while trying to figure out what building is in the
picture and where it is located. (It's not on my maps.) It's on the
400 block of rue St-Pierre.
| The Royal Bank of Canada building appears to serve as the foundation of a
skyscraper. I observed later, however, that this is simply an optical
illusion.
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| A poor attempt at photographing the coffered ceilings inside the Royal
Bank of Canada. They don't like it when people photograph the inside of
bank, or at least the side of the building in which money is kept.
| Inside the Royal Bank of Canada, looking back toward the main entrance.
| More fancy architecture.
Would be excellent with appropriate cropping.
| Square Victoria, with its greenery, its statue, its neighboring imposing
modern skyscraper (on the right) (the current Stock Exchange building), and
its Metro entrance, a gift from Paris's transit commission.
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