Montreal; Monday, 26 August, 2019

Clearly the time zone differences had started to catch up with me as I had another disturbed nights sleep, but at least this time I managed to make it down to breakfast in a reasonable time. After breakfast I headed back up to my room, packed and checked out.

After leaving my luggage at the hotel I headed over to the neighbouring cathedral - Marie-Reine-du-Monde (Mary, Queen of the World) – a suitably modest title for a cathedral. This large Catholic cathedral had been built by the French church in the heart of the predominantly Protestant English part of the city mostly because they could. Modelled on St Peters Basilica in Rome it is a very large church, although inside there isn’t much to see.

The same can’t be said for my next stop which was the Notre-Dame Basilica in the Old Town. This one is, naturally, modelled on the Parisian namesake on the outside, but inside its clear that no expense was spared on the gold, ornamentation and general bling. Of an evening there are lightshows that take place inside the cathedral and I could see why as it’s a pretty incredible assault on the senses.

From the Cathedral I walked down the hill to the oldest part of the city. Here where the French first set up Montreal is the Pointe-à-Callière museum. The museum is built over parts of the ruins of Old Montreal and tells the story of the founding and development of the city. The museum stretches down underneath the main square and you access several different buildings from their basements, which means there is a lot to explore in the museum.

By the time I’d finished looking round the museum it was heading towards 4pm so I was just in time to make one of the other river cruise companies tours on the St Lawrence. This was on a much larger ship than the previous tour, so consequently didn’t have quite the same effect when the boat moved into the rapid currents of the St Lawrence river, but it was still an interesting tour showing off many of the key riverside sights of the city.

Back at the dock I headed back into the Old Town and over to the metro station to pick up the train back to the hotel, where I collected my bags and picked up the bus out to the airport.

I thought I might have been leaving myself too much time, but I was quite glad I did as the bus crawled the last few miles into the terminal building, taking well over an hour to make the journey – and a good 20 minutes to go the final mile.

I checked in and headed through to departures to wait for my flight back to London.