Montreal - our final day in East Canada - Toronto, Canada
Toronto, Canada
Today we explored Montreal at our leisure.
The Underground city is an indoor, interconnected complex in downtown Montreal. We walked to the Eaton Centre and to Place Ville Marie - the shopping centre under Fairmont Le Reine Elizabeth, where we are staying. The underground shopping center is a network of 30 km of pedestrian walkway with tunnels that link 10 metro stations, 7 hotels, cafes, 200 restaurants, 1700 boutiques, and 60 office buildings, movie theaters, convention complexes, 2 universities, a college, a subway and bus stations.
Old Montreal is the oldest area of the city. We visited Basilique Notre Dame again, a beautiful church built between 1672 and 1683. It was reconstructed in the 1800s. The streets in this section of the town are cobblestone and the buildings are from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
We took an underground train to the Olympic Centre. The trains have thick rubber wheels. We also went to the Olympic stadium and went up the funicular. The views from the top were spectacular. This is where the 1976 Montreal Olympics were held. It is one of the tallest leaning structures in the world. We then walked across to the Jardin Botanique. The gardens are beautiful. We visited the Chinese garden, the Japanese garden, the bonsai gardens and the many rosé gardens. We saw many sculpted animals made from plants.
We departed Montreal next morning and headed to the airport with a packed breakfast box provided by the hotel. As the tip for the taxi was included in the taxi voucher we were not required to pay it. However the taxi driver got very annoyed that we were not paying him a tip as well. Tipping is a large part of the hospitality industry in Canada and we were always willing to pay for good service and good food. We always found the service to be quality service as many workers relied on tipping to make their money.