It's all gone a bit French!

After leaving Niagara we drove to Montreal.  On the way we passed through a few places that sounded familiar (Grimsby, Whitby, Lincoln, Peterborough, Newcastle) and ended up staying in Perth - all a bit weird.  Can't they think of their own names?!?

We stopped for an afternoon in Ottawa (Canada's capital).  Ottawa was a nice city to wander around for a few hours - it has a few "historic" buildings (the 1920's you understand!), a nice canal (sounds a bit anoracky, but it was quite good) and a statue of our monarch Queen Elizabeth II!

Parliament Hill building

Rideau Canal

Our monarch

Next stop was Quebec. We obviously knew it would be more French than the other parts of Canada, but honestly it was like driving through France.  All the road signs were in French, with not even the slightest acknowledgement that the English language existed.  There were also people on bicycles wearing berets and striped tops munching on garlic and onions saying "he haaaw, he haaaw" - all true, not one word of a lie ;-)

Fortunately Lisa remembered some French from school, otherwise we would have been in real trouble - not knowing how to say my name is Lisa Adams and my eyes are blue would have left us horribly exposed!

As for Montreal - well this wasn't as good as we were expecting which left us feeling a bit disappointed.  Old Montreal was nice enough and we visited a number of old buildings, with the best being the Basilica Notre Dame which was pretty amazing inside.

Basilica Notre Dame

Canadian bank notes

We didn't think there was much to the downtown area or the 'underground city'.  To be frank, it isn't that at all, it's a load of shops that have filled the old tunnel system - no real character or charm about it to be honest, so thumbs down!  One highlight though - we spotted a new outfit for Rob to get at the first available opportunity (being modelled by this fine Asian chap)!

Not sure which outfit would be better on Rob?

We also decided to pay a visit to the Mont Royal Park which from reading the blurb looked OK.  First impressions count for quite a bit and when we got there to spot some 'youths' (yes, we are old!) clearly dealing drugs at the park's entrance it sort of set the downward tone!

Prepared to give it a chance we left the druggies behind and climbed a high hill to get an elevated view of Montreal but to be honest it wasn't really worth the effort as the view was a bit cack.

View from Mont Royal Park

In short, don't think we'd rush back to Montreal unless it was for something specific (hmm, like F1 maybe...)

Which leads us nicely onto what we did on our last morning in Montreal.  On Saturday it was the one thing Rob was looking forward to the most - driving our Chrysler Town & Country hire car around the Gilles Villeneuve race track - the same track they use for the F1 races.  Sadly the speed limit is only 30mph though!

He did stop on P1 and just had to wheelspin off the start line - he drove the track sticking to the racing line and he loved it!  It was a really good day and even though it was chucking it down with rain it was actually really good fun to drive the track.  There aren't too many places in the world that you can drive around a Grand Prix track gratis.  Good work Montreal.

Wishing the car was a Ferrari!

Rob on the Wall of Champions

That's about it really for Canada... Heading back into USA and to Baxter State Park in Maine where a couple of nights primitive camping is to be done......Fab!