Tuesday morning was overcast and a bit rainy so we thought it would be the best time to visit the Beaux Arts museum on Sherbrooke street West. We went for the included breakfast first, in the hotel lobby restaurant and filled up on omelets and headed out. We went and found the metro station in the Palais du Congres across the street and bought 6 transit tickets each for the week. They do have a "smart" type card now that you can buy and load up with prepaid transport but we didn't know how much we would be using it so the tickets were better for us. Turned out the best thing as we ended up not using 2 of the 6 each.
We took the metro to the Peel stop. The metro is pretty easy to navigate. There's only a few lines and a few transfer points. From the Peel station we walked through some of the underground network to Sherbrooke Street. Meandered down Sherbrooke towards where the museum is. It's a busy street and there are quite a few banks along this stretch so we took advantage of the bank machine to top up our funds. The museum itself is free for the permanent collections and we didn't fancy the temporary ones. We decided to start at the top floor with the European paintings and work our way down, with a stop at the cafeteria (which is behind the bistro) for a coffee. We enjoyed the paintings and sculpture, and really enjoyed the Napoleon exhibit (see the review for the museum in this journal). There was another building worth of exhibits that we didn't go to see this time, trying to save our feet a bit as we would be doing some more walking from there. The shop, too, was really good and there were some Christmas things in as well. I took the chance and bought a lovely glass geisha ornament and hope it will get home in one piece.
The sun is trying to come out so we walked down to St. Catherine Street and went for a break in Starbucks. I fired up my ipod Touch to check emails and we discovered that the concert we were going to next week has been canceled! Oh dear! Graham was also trying to get in touch with one of his mates who was supposed to be meeting up with us on Friday. No luck but we may use the business centre at the hotel to do some surfing that's a bit easier to navigate than a little touch screen.
We browsed our way down one of the best shopping streets i've been on, into shops and malls. I lost my camera last week and needed to replace it. We found a store in the shopping centre next to the Eaton Centre and found the perfect replacement on sale! Bonus! We eventually walked all the way back to the hotel. Montreal in the centre is fairly compact. Things aren't really as far away as they seem but can feel like it if you have sore feet! Which we did. We have tickets for the hockey game at the Bell centre tonight and i decided to save my feet and order room service for our meal before the game. It was actually very good, and reasonably priced for hotel room service.
We got a taxi to the Bell Centre and found our way to our seats. It's Graham's first ever hockey game but as he doesn't really enjoy sports, i don't think he's probably going to really appreciate it. He's only going because i want to go! Even though i haven't followed hockey for years, i still reserve a spot for "my" team, the Montreal Canadiens and it was pretty exciting to hear the National Anthem sung in French like we always saw on telly and see the game and the players in the familiar colours play. Unfortuantely, they lost. But it was an experience i'm so glad i didn't miss! The team (also called Les Habitants or The Habs) played in the old Montreal Forum when i used to watch. The Bell Centre is fairly new but it didn't matter to me.
After, we got a little turned around but the centre is on the same street as our hotel and after being pointed in the right direction, we ended up walking (trudging) all the way back rather than try to find the metro for just two stops. It turned into about a 20 minute hike but it wasn't too cold.