Mez's Ramblings: 08 Apr 2009

21:20 EDT (was getting it wrong before as we've already gone to daylight saving!) 02:20 BST

Well when we woke up this morning we made a decision. We're leaving Montreal a day early, a decision that was made based on several factors. Firstly, the entire city is like a ghost town. Because of the weather (still snowing and quite cold) nobody is above ground, and apart from the shopping malls there isn't much for a tourist to do down in the underground city. Secondly, our accommodation is starting to get under our skin. It may be that we've been spoiled with our previous two hostels, but we're cold and more than slightly uncomfortable in our little wooden shack. Thirdly, we'd actually like to spend a bit more time in Boston. The more that we've thought about it (admittedly biased from the situation we're in) the more we'd like to move on to our next destination. So the plan for today was to do some more sight seeing and sort out travel and accommodation for Boston.

First thing (well actually at about 11am) we made our way to the Basilica de Notre Dame and paid $5 to enter the church. When we entered there was a concert being played by what we assume was a school/youth string orchestra. It laid a rather nice backdrop to a very beautiful church (S was less than happy to pay to enter a church, but thats a different story :) )

Next we decided to have some lunch, having come across a promising looking Mexican restaurant (strictly not tex-mex the menu said!). We both had a broccoli soup for starter which was excellent and then M had "some white stuff that I think was based on corn topped with chicken and covered with green sauce accompanied by black beans and rice" , S had stuffed chicken. All of which was excellent and about £7 each - can't complain!!

We then carried on down the same street to the Archaeology Museum. This had a temporary exhibition about pre-Colombian Costa Rica which was beautifully presented and very interesting. The permanent exhibitions are all in the basement and consist of the old foundations of previous structures on the site. These extend well beyond the basement of the museum building and you emerge from a building a couple of blocks away from where you started. As it was snowing again we took the opportunity to stop for a coffee before heading to the greyhound station to book our tickets to Boston.

We then headed back home to pack and do some washing before going to a different part of town for t. We decided to try French and went for quite a posh meal in an old townhouse, we both had asparagus soup for starter, S had steak and M had rack of lamb, we shared a cheese platter for pudding.