One more day in Montreal and then off to Quebec City

Monday, August 20 was our last day in the beautiful Montreal area. We headed into downtown Montreal about noon.

The trip in was uneventful and we crossed yet another bridge, this time the Victoria Bridge. This is an old bridge. The center 'lane' is occupied by train tracks and the vehicle traffic lanes are on either side. To make it more interesting, the bridge deck is metal grates, no asphalt......and it is just one lane. Yikes! At least it isn't as high as the other bridges!

Depending on whether there is a ship in the Canal they divert the traffic around it. You really have to watch the signs!

Good thing we didn't have the trailer connected!

After enough turns we end up on that bridge.

We had to go around the back of the ship to get to the Bridge.

Nice view from the bridge.

Metal grates and notice we are 'hanging' on the edge of the bridge.

Downtown from the bridge.

We managed to find our way into the city and parked the truck on Notre Dame Avenue. It was a hot day but we walked up and down and around the area admiring the architecture.

Parking was cheap. One dollar per hour!

Interesting buildings.

Another church. This one is not so pretty from the outside. A sad state for many churches these days. Declining congregations mean that many are closing their doors. This can be good news for developers as there are many churches being purchased, renovated and sold as condos.

Needs a good cleaning, but still very ornate.

Nice old iron railing fence

Mural on a wall. Sure spruces up an otherwise dull wall.

Lots of antique shops.

Atwater tower. There is a market here. (Read about it)

Rona store? On Notre Dame in Montreal! We had to have a look.

Old tools on display. Likely the type sold in the original store.

This place was packed with inventory.

We just had to have a look inside this Rona store. Almost in downtown Montreal. It looked pretty small from the outside, but inside this place was packed with inventory. There are three floors and I'm sure it has a much inventory than all but the largest 50,000 square foot mega-store. It was amazing. Not sure how they found  anything. The fellow I spoke with said the owners family had been in the hardware business for 130 years!

From left: Maral, Angela, Josianne, me, Cheryl, Julien

The real treat of the day came about 5 PM when four former colleagues came to the restaurant for drinks and supper. What a great pleasure to see them! Before retiring, I worked on a virtual team and had team mates in Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax. As you can imagine the cost to get everyone together to meet in person was very high so we met 'virtually' by phone. I think the last time I saw these folks was three years ago so to give them all a hug in person was a rare treat. We had a great time catching up on work gossip and personal lives. I was even able to follow one of them across the Champlain Bridge that I would never have been able to do on my own! We arrived safely home to the campground by 8:30 PM.

They are building a new bridge beside the existing Champlain Bridge. They are just putting up the suspension cables.

Tuesday, August 21 is moving day. We leave the area and travel a couple of hours east to Quebec City. We really enjoyed our time in Montreal and hope we return some day soon, but there was more of Quebec to see so we packed up and hit the road.

We arrived early afternoon at Camping Transit, a campground just southeast of Quebec City near the town of Levis. We got a nasty surprise when we opened the door of the trailer to find a set of shade rollers had come down on the table. Turns out the heavy roller shades are held in place by a couple of pieces of plastic! I headed to the RV dealer close by but he thought I may need to special order the brackets from the manufacturer. So we use tie-wraps and screws to keep the blind in place. the heavy valance is screwed back in place......sort of. Hope it stays, but with the terrible roads we have been on I suspect we may need to remove the valance until a permanent replacement bracket can be sourced and we can put everything back the way it was.

Our site at Camping Transit outside of Quebec City. Right beside a major highway so a bit noisy.

It is supposed to rain Wednesday so we'll do our own touring around but then take the tour bus on Thursday. We can adapt!

......and that was Our View From Here!