Montreal Architecture

Montreal buildings old and new.

After a lazy Sunday of eating brunch, seeing everyone off, eating and a whole lot of sleep, I found myself waking up on Monday to a person knocking on my door. It was the B&B girl with my breakfast. A toasted bagel (montreal bagel!), cream cheese and a glass of orange juice. It had seemed that I overslept. It was around 9:30am and my check out time was 11am.

My train would leave Montreal at 6:15pm. I planned getting on that particular train so I'd have the day to spend walking around seeing the sights. My first stop was the Hudson's Bay store where I saw a piece of luggage with wheels on sale. It was only $60.00. A small price to pay to keep all the stuff in one place without your back giving out. Granted the luggage was purple. Maybe that's why it was on sale.


My new VIA rail luggage with wheels!

I did a lot of walking around. About seven hours. I made my way down to old Montreal where the streets are cobble stone roads and all over downtown. It was great to see people rushing to and from work knowing that I didn't have to. I noticed that in Montreal there is a lot more green space and open areas than we have in Toronto. People actually sit in the park under a tree or next to a sprinker system eat and talk to friends during lunch. It seemed much more friendly than the concrete city of Toronto.

Even the buildings looked good. They are not as bunched up as the ones in Toronto and seem to go well together. The downtown core spreads out over much more space than that of Toronto. Maybe it's just an illusion. The old and new buildings almost look like they were built to go with one another where as here in Toronto it looks like building plans were taken out of someone's ass, cheapened up somehow, and stuffed into an area not really zoned for that purpose to begin with.

There are some really ugly structures here in Toronto (like the residence on Harbord and Spadina - it looks like a bomb shelter). Even the new theatre for dance, which is still under construction, on Queen and University, is starting to look like crap. It doesn't look anything like the concept drawings posted on the construction walls. Seems someone took the money from the construction and just pocketed it. We'll see in the end how the building turns out.