DOWNTOWN MONTREAL

Our charming hotel is big on visual charm but the bed was too soft AND it's only a queen so we didn't sleep very well.   And this hotel, Auberge de Vieux Ville is on Conde Nast's best of 2012 list.  In their defense, I think we got a not so good room because we had booked two nights and they didn't have a third, so when they found us a room for the third night, we got it for the others.  And really, it's only the fact that the bed is too soft.  And like all hotels anymore, your only choice is to have a down comforter or nothing.  And the down comforter is too hot, but you get cold with nothing.  It isn't so bad when you have a bed to yourself but when you're sharing a small bed, one person is getting stuck with the comforter the other one threw off.    They had a wonderful breakfast.  

This morning we took a long walk --not on purpose, we overshot our destination --and visited the contemporary art museum here in Montreal.   It's quite a big museum, but I wasn't all that impressed with the collection.   

However, they have built a beautiful complex where this museum is.  The kind of thing Sacramento might have if we didn't have to waste all our money on a basketball arena.  

Our plan was to then go to the Pointe-a-Calliere museum, which is an archeological museum in the old town.  It has an underground tour of old buildings that were here from the 1700s.  

After visiting the contemporary art museum, we decided to stop for lunch.  Did I mention it was cold?

We had lunch  in a food court at an underground shopping center in Montreal. There are lots of these because the weather is so bad. We are cold today, the temperature is in the low sixties, and they have the heat on already which is the main reason we came in here

We bought a sandwich combo at Panini du Monde, which had 2 big salads (your choice from about 8) and a coke for $9.99. Of course there's a tax of $1.50 on that. It's always astounding when they tell you the tax. 

Anyway, by the time we finished lunch it was after 3, and we realized that if we walked back to the other museum we probably wouldn't have time to take the tour.  

So we hung around downtown, went back to the anglican church we visited on our city tour last week, and tried to get some pictures of the stained glass.

 We weren't too good at it.  We also checked out a couple of underground shopping centers (nothing very interesting except the winter coats that are out already and the fact that they have the heat on and it's September 4).  

So by about 5 o'clock we thought maybe we could find someplace to have dinner, in spite of the fact that we finished lunch at 3 pm and i wonder why I have a weight problem.  So  we just ambled around some more.  Eventually we ended up at St. Denis street, which is not only an interesting shopping street, it's also  the start of the Latin quarter.   And it's an area where there's a college, and we saw a continuation of the initiations we saw yesterday in Quebec.  These seemed to be more about running around drinking and less about beng told what to do, but I could be wrong about that.  We had a hamburger and frites for dinner, then went up the street to have a version of an ice cream sandwich that uses macarons, my favorite French pastry, as the "cookie" and has ice cream in the middle.  They were really good.  

We made it back to our hotel by 9 pm.  My pedometer says we walked 13500 steps.  Finally!