Montreal - Day 4

We didn't have too many plans for today. We had a walking tour of Downtown from our guidebook and Trev wanted to look for a new pair of shoes. The walking tour was kind of interesting. No major sites. We did see a mall with an indoor ice skating rink in it that was kind of neat!

Trev has been wanting (and badly needing) new shoes (specifically new New Balance shoes) for about a year now. But he hasn't been able to find any in Sudbury or Toronto. So we figured we'd try Montreal. On our walking tour there was a big mall. We figured we'd once again hit some shoe stores to see if any of them had New Balance. Often stores do have New Balance, but they have the athletic sort instead of the more casual sort. Anyways we walked into the mall and the very first store I saw was a New Balance store! What a coincidence! They had tons of shoes to pick from and so Trev finally has a new pair of shoes. To indicate how badly he needed new shoes, he wore the New Balance ones out of the store and the other ones went straight into the garbage.


Here are some other highlights from our walking tour:


This church is a one quarter version of St. Peters in Rome.

Some yummy ice cream (Trev got chocolate and some other chocolate and I got maple and caramel).

Joel got Baby Mum Mums

There is a wonderful exhibit at the Musee des Beaux-Artes right now celebrating the 40th anniversary of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Bed in for Peace which took place in Montreal. Today happened to be 40 years to the day and so there was much fanfare at the exhibit. Live music and Radio Canada was there as well. We have tracked down many Beatles sites/walks/events in our travels. We have gone on a Beatles walking tour in London, visited Trident Sound Studios in London where the Beatles recorded Hey Jude, taken pictures at Abbey Road, done the Magical Mystery Tour in Liverpool, and more. So it's no surprise that we would do this!

There is no doubt that John Lennon was a little bit nutty. Him and Yoko Ono were definitely eccentric (to put it lightly). But at least they were promoting a good message with their crazy antics!

This is a Yoko Ono art project that Trevor immediately recognized from watching the Beatles Anthology so many times. John Lennon was introduced to Yoko Ono at an art show she was putting on and this was one of the exhibits at that original art show. It is a tiny word YES on a white ceiling with a ladder to climb with a magnifying glass. I guess you have to be deeper than me to understand it.

Anyways, it was a very well done exhibit and we really enjoyed it!

Next on our jorney was a quick lunch and then we headed back to Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal) to wander around where we were a bit rushed before Cirque du Soleil last time. I also wanted to check out a Christmas Store I found on the internet (surprise surprise...if there is one other theme to our travels besides Beatles, it is Christmas decorations. I have one from every trip we've done.). We were able to get a cute little ball personalized with Joel's name, plus another cute decoration (a daddy bear with a baby bear on his back snowshoeing). Yay!

After we wandered around a bit, we decided to do a horsedrawn carraige tour of Old Montreal. Trev and I have seen horse drawn carraiges so many times around Europe, but we've never done one. So it was a treat (and a great way to rest our feet). Joel loved it and attracted a lot of attention from the people on the street as he screeched in glee as we were going by them!

Note the change in outfit after a major poop blowout of massive proportions. Good thing we had this backup outfit with us!

Surprisingly enough, Joel did not seem all that frightened by the horse!

After the carraige ride, we decided to head back to the same restaurant that we went to a few days ago that Marie recommended. I had seen some awesome desserts on the menu before that we were too full to try and the atmosphere there was great. A bonus was that it is great for Joel too with lots of space for a high chair. We got a light dinner of French Onion soup to have room for crepes!

The ridiculously delicous crepes! The top one is fruit and custard with a berry sauce. The bottom one is cheesecake filled crepes with strawberries, strawberry sauce and graham crackle crumble. Soooo good!

Okay remember two days ago when I posted that we visited a square with artists doing caricatures and portraits. Well earlier in the day we were watching a guy do a portrait of a woman and it was excellent. I was thinking about getting one done of Joel, but I wasn't sure how much they were. Well after dinner we walked out onto the square. We had about half an hour until a show we were going to. The guy I had seen earlier was gone, but there was another guy there. He asked me if I wanted a picture of Joel. I asked him how much. He went from $65 to $25 and I finally agreed. I thought it would be really cute to have a portrait of him!

I should mention at this point that Joel is more tired than he ever has been in his life. Today at lunch he almost fell asleep in his high chair (and that does not ever happen). He has been sleeping alright at night, but his naps in the srollers have been a bit shorter than usual. I guess day after day this has caught up with him. Oh and for some reason he's been waking up early too. Today we were out with him in the stroller for maybe 5 minutes after breakfast and he was already asleep.

So he's been a bit crankier than usual. Thankfully we've had his soother or he would have whined a whole lot. So getting him to look at the guy doing his portrait was quite a feat. Trev and I used every trick we had to keep him from screaming the whole time. It was a lot of effort.

So what did all that effort plus $25 get us?

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Are you ready???

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This! Not only does it not look at all like Joel, but apparently when we were saying his name to make him look or smile, the guy thought we were saying Joy so he wrote Joy at the bottom! Oy Vay! Not a great ending to our trip. I personally think it looks a lot like Dobby the house elf from Harry Potter. The guy even said sorry because he knew it didn't look like him. He said it's really hard to draw babies that young, especially because he has no hair. He told us to come back next year when he's older and he could do something better. Ummm...if it's so hard to draw bald babies, why did you ask me if I wanted a portrait of my bald baby? He still took the money though!

Last thing on the agenda was a 'Light and Sound' show at Notre Dame Basilica. I am not really too sure what I expected. I guess I thought they would light up different parts of the basilica and have music along with it. The website for it looked kind of cool. We had peaked in at the basilica before to see it and it's quite captivating.
http://www.terragalleria.com/images/canada/caqc10737.jpeg

So now Joel is cranky after we made him sit for 20 minutes to have his portrait done, and now we are here at this light show. It was 35 minutes long. The first 30 minutes were ridiculous! It was low-budget skits on a screen telling about the boring history of the cathedral. They should have just had a narrator, but instead it was actors portraying the architects, preists and nuns. I think I could have produced something better in my basement. Trev and I were cracking up throughout it. The last 5 minutes were cool though. They lifted the screen to show the amazing altar piece all lit up. Then they slowly lit up/revealed other neat features of the cathedral. Anyways by the end Joel was crying and we slipped out about a minute before it actually ended.

So not the most successful evening of our trip, but it was still fun. The day in total was great. I will be happy to get home though. I feel sort of bad for dragging Joel around with us the whole time. He's so tired and he was a real trooper to do so well. I'll try to write another post soon about what we learned travelling with a baby.

Anyways I'd better be going now. Trev is packing up our whole room without me right now. I should probably go help!