September 13th: Lots of Walking

I slept pretty well, but I was so comfy that it took a little while to finally drag myself out of bed. It was worth it, though...

...for the coffee that was waiting for us down the street. The place we had gone to for breakfast on the last trip had changed its name from Le Couteau to Cafe Myriade, but the coffee and croissants were still delicious. And thankfully, the guy at the counter didn't look at us like were were crazy when we each ordered two coffees.

We hung out at the apartment for a little while after breakfast. Mark used the app on his phone to try translate a kind of ridiculously bad looking French book that someone had left, which was pretty funny. After a little while we got changed and headed out. It was time for a run!

 This time we looked up directions first! We started by running by the George-Etienne Cartier Monument, then followed a path back through the trees. A ridiculous number of stairs later...

...we reached the Chalet du Mont-Royal. Finally! This is what we tried to run to back in June, but wound up getting lost in the cemetery instead.

We went inside for a few minutes, but the best part is outside.

It has a fantastic view of Montreal! We hung out for a few minutes, then walked back down the hill.

We passed the monument again on the way back...

...then got distracted by the awesome playground off to the side. Mark climbed around on the equipment for a little while, then we watched a dog walker try to keep a very silly pug puppy from getting all of the other dogs tangled up. We eventually left the park and walked back along Avenue du Mont-Royal toward the apartment.

We had planned ahead and brought money with on our run. Good thing, because these hot dogs from Dirty Dogs were awesome! Basically, I just want all of my food to be covered in mac and cheese. We ate our hot dogs, stopped in a couple more shops, then went back to the apartment to get cleaned up so we could do some more exploring.

It didn't take long to take the Metro over to Jean-Drapeau. We walked past the Biosphere, over a bridge, and a few minutes later...

...we were standing on the Formula One track where Mark had watched the race! Turns out when they're not using the track for racing, it's just open to the public and you're free to walk, bike, rollerblade, and in some spots, even drive on it, which is really cool.

Even cooler, just on the other side of the track is the old rowing venue from the 1976 Olympics. The bleacher seats were a little worn, but it was still really cool to see the rowing lanes set up. There were a few boats out there training.

This weird boat thing was going back and forth through the water. I have no idea what it was doing.

We walked back over to the track...

...and decided to walk along it for a little while. It was really cool to take a nice lazy walk along the track after seeing them actually race on it on TV.

We walked past the Casino de Montreal. It looked crazy, like a weird spaceship had dropped down in the middle of the island. Mark tried to show me a shortcut somewhere around here, but it was closed off for the season so we went back out to the track to continue the walk.

We walked right past pit lane...

...and the starting grid, which was nuts. I didn't realize the cars were so narrow; they seem so wide when you see them on TV.

Mark stood here and said, "Derp derp, I'm Lewis Hamilton (my favorite driver)." Hmph!

Since we couldn't take the shortcut we'd planned, we wound up walking almost completely around the track. It was a little warm, but we did find this cool spot that looked out on the river (and had a nice breeze).

A LOT of walking later, we made it back to the Metro station. The old Olympic swimming venues happened to be right next to the Metro; the diving platforms were still there, which was pretty cool. We stayed for a couple minutes, then hopped back on the Metro. We had more exploring to do!