This place is like a different country. Every sign, even highway and street signs like "slow" or "no right turn on red" are in French (I found myself ignoring some signs--is that an ad or something important for me?). And some folks here don't speak English (maybe they're from Quebec). Unfortunately, the part of my brain that knows a few words in other languages is totally inaccessible to me when I'm faced with someone who doesn't speak English. I'm useless to even say "Do you speak English?" or even "Hello." Maybe this is why I didn't venture out as much in Montreal.

Or maybe it's just not as interesting as other places we've gone. Olympic Parc was pretty to drive by, Mont Royal Parc had a really good view of downtown (that was neat), and the buildings in the old part of town really did look old and European, that was neat too. But I didn't get as excited about Montreal as I thought I would. Well, here are the pictures:

Here is the pretty countryside to the south of Montreal. We came up on a small highway and it was a very pretty drive from Burlington.

Our spot at Camping Allouette. The place was huge (400 sites) and very clean. There was even a coin-operated, covered place to wash your RV (it was $12 Canadian--about $9.50 US, and well worth it--the last place that let us wash the RV was Fort Myers, Florida, around New Years).

The architecture of homes in Montreal--they were tall with stained glass windows and many had second-floor entrances with tall tall exterior stairways.

Montreal is 350 years old as a European town. I'm not sure how old this church is, but it looked very old from the outside; it was right downtown near the old part of the city.

a street in the old part of the city. This was my favorite part of Montreal; the streets were terribly narrow and curved (like I remember from London), but the buildings looked so interesting--like they'd be olde-time curiosity shoppes selling shrunken heads (instead of t-shirt stores and banks).

There was a long narrow park in the old city, and it was Sunday when we visited, and the first warm day they (and we) had had, so the place was packed with people. The street by the docks was closed to cars, and lots of folks were riding rented surries with their families.

It was "free day" for all the museums, so they were incredibly packed. We walked into the Montreal history museum and the Montreal Science Center; in both it was impossible to see the exhibits, but we got to see how big the science center is.

We drove up to the big park in Montreal, which has Mont Royal (Royal Mtn.), really more of a tall hill. You can park your car and walk up to a pavillion with this view:

On Monday, Mark worked and Katie and I ran errands, the funnest being going to a nearby IKEA and looking for a few storage boxes. Katie had her own little shopping cart and really loved looking in all the IKEA "houses." Tuesday Katie and I played around the campground. Wednesday, Mark took Katie back to the science center and a nearby fountain to play. It was a hot day (in the mid-80s) and she got soaked:

Today we got up at 5:30 to start our long drive to Toronto (and hopefully miss rush-hour traffic through Montreal). Highway signage around Montreal being as confusing as it is, and our old atlas map of the Quebec province being as small as it is, we quickly got lost, but (after Mark allowed me to stop and ask directions) it turned out that we were on a good road to be on. Now we are in Ontario, about 250 miles from Toronto, and I have bought a nice big map of Ontario and am relaxing the way you can when every highway and exit are marked on paper, and all the signs are bilingual!