Thoughts on Montreal...

It was good to be back in Montreal as I like the city, mainly because the traffic is far less intense than over here in Greater London, meaning that riding a bike is not life-threatening. Some days the roads are empty and, as you can witness from my last post, it's possible to stand in the middle of the street and take a photograph of the bike parked against the kerb.

Room 535, Hyatt Regency, Montreal – a bit corporate.

The other good thing about Montreal is the way residential houses can mingle with the urban constructions of the city centre; you don't have to ride far before you find what look like affordable places to live. Now you could say that London's like this: get off the train at Victoria and you're only a walk away from residential property bang in the centre of town, but in London, of course, it costs a small fortune and for this reason the place is populated mainly by rich foreigners. "London is full of Arabs," as Elvis Costello once warbled.  Whether Montreal is the same, I don't know, but I doubt it.

The only thing there seems to be a lot of in Montreal is tramps and, oddly, they're mostly astute, young people, sitting there on the streets with pieces of cardboard explaining their predicament to passers by.

Montreal as seen from room 535 of the Hyatt Regency hotel

The last time I was in Montreal I walked a fair way along Sherbrooke and not once did things deteriorate. This time, on the Rue Sainte Catherine, things did deteriorate at either end, with the shopping area of the city somewhere in the middle. Carry on beyond it towards Cabot Square and things get a little dreary. In the other direction there's a couple of sex shops and a few sleazy establishments mingled in with pawn shops and other lower grade retail outlets.

I was staying in the rather corporate Hyatt Regency (room 534 on the fifth floor) which afforded a pleasant enough view of the city. What was quite impressive was the Complexe Desjardins, a kind of subterranean shopping mall with plenty of food outlets and a pleasant fountain as a centrepiece. I say 'subterranean' because to reach it from the hotel I had to take a lift down from the ground floor to the 2nd floor (starting from the 6th floor, which was odd in itself because the 6th floor of the lift near the bar was effectively on the ground floor). In other words, from the ground floor there were lifts going up to the rooms and down the the shopping mall.

Street theatre in front of a Bixi bike docking station, Montreal.

It was possible to walk through the mall and into the Chinese quarter of town, which I never got to explore even if I did promise myself another ride on the Bixi bikes later on (I had a 24-hour pass, which meant I could ride a bike, dock it, do something, pick up another bike and so on until my 24-hour period elapsed. Still, you can't have everything and I was there to work.

The shops were impressive – a woman's dream, no doubt, as there was Zara, Banana Republic, all the big brands you expect to find in an international city. My favourite shop was called Roots, mainly because of a fantastic bobble hat ($38) that boasted tea cosy proportions and would be ideal for the cold weather we're expecting here in the UK any time soon. I say 'any time soon', but let's assume that the early months of 2014, which are now weeks away, will be characterised by extreme cold, icy roads and snow. These days it seems that we never escape it, although a white Christmas is never, ever on the cards.

Montreal has much more severe winters than we do in the UK, but it goes without saying that the Canadians somehow cope without having to shut everything down. As I write this, it's minus 3 degrees in Montreal and there are clear skies. Here in London it's 11 deg C and partly cloudy. In fact it's mildly blustery too, but refreshing.

I was in Montreal for five nights and six days. I flew out British Airways on Saturday 19th October and flew back the following Thursday on a night flight. Both ways the flights were good, thanks to Morrissey's Autobiography, which I've probably mentioned before. The flight to Montreal is not long – only six hours – and it goes by pretty quickly as the service is good (if you fly BA). On both flights I had an exit seat (for more leg room) and apart from about 20 minutes of turbulence coming back, the flights were smooth and I seem to have conquered my mild apprehensiveness towards flying. This, of course, is fairly natural when you consider how often I have to fly these days...but I'm not complaining.

Cycling around Montreal...again!

The start of the journey on the Rue Sainte-Catherine.

The last time I was here it was late August 2012. Now it's October 2013 and it's a little colder. I had planned to take out one of Montreal's famous Bixi Bikes yesterday (Sunday 20th October) but a mixture of that slight bite in the air and general fatigue meant I postponed it until today. Even today was kind of on a whim. I was walking down the Rue Sainte-Catherine, a street that disects Montreal from one end to the other almost, except that this time, instead of going into the main shopping drag, I went the other way where things got a little ramshackle in places: graffiti on the walls and general sleaze. As I say, I was on foot, but then I spied a row of Bixi Bikes and decided that I'd go for it.

Every time I take out a bike, be it in Germany or San Antonio, it doesn't matter, I'm still going to get problems and once again, I spent hours trying to figure out what to do, and eventually discovering that the process was quite straightforward.

The port area adjacent to Montreal's old town.

Once the bike was out, I headed further along the Rue Sainte Catherine, moving away from the shops in the centre of town and heading God knows where. The traffic was mild so there were no problems on a safety front and the bike seemed to work well, even if the brakes were almost non-existent. I reached a busy road (Avenue de Lorimier) and had to turn right and there in front of me a huge bridge. I turned right on to Boulevard René-Lévesque Est, and followed an equally busy road using a two-lane cycle track, which took me back towards the city via the cobbled streets of the old town and, indeed, the old port where I stopped and took a shot of the Bixi with a boat in the background, then I jumped back on, retraced my steps towards the old town and enjoyed the tranquility of the ride.

The cobbled streets of the old town...

The skies darkened, threatening rain, but it was holding out and I was enjoying the fresh air as I found University and followed it all the way back to the Rue Sainte-Catherine where I turned left and headed back towards the bike station from where I had released the bike. Then, having replaced it in docking station, I walked back up the street, stopping in a small café for a tea and a pastry and then heading back up the Rue Sainte-Catherine towards the hotel. I stopped off at an excellent music shop – Volume – that sold some great old CDs.

All the photos on the journey were taken on my new iphone – which I needed because my old phone was only tri-band and most of the USA and Canada requires quadband. I know, very boring, but as I spend a lot of time 'over here' I needed to sort the phone out. And also I'm a big kid who loves silly gadgets.

As I write this, it's 2329hrs at home in the UK and 1829hrs here in Montreal. It's not a bad place.

The Bixi Bike station on Rue Sainte-Catherine

The rider's point of view...

Further along the route...on the Avenue de Lorimier

Everything's the same the world over...

A Montreal Bixi bike, sponsored by Rio Tinto Alcan.

Globalisation? Don't you just hate it? Wherever you go, everything's always the same and here's another example: Boris Bikes – in this case 'Bixi' bikes – but why not? Beats hailing a taxi any day and it's sponsored by Rio Tinto Alcan, a huge mining company and producer of aluminium.

As mentioned in the previous post, it's been raining here the last couple days and it's raining now. My plan is to get out on a Bixi tomorrow, but if the rain persists, even on the other side of the Atlantic, I'll be sending myself an 'abort' text.

It's safer to cycle over here than it is in London. They have the cycle lanes sorted out, but I'll report tomorrow – if the rain eases up.

A whole row of Bixi bikes. 

Bixi, by the way, is a combination of the words 'bicycle' and 'taxi' and the plan for tomorrow, hopefully, is to ride over to the river and back and take in the 'old' part of town, which is full of cobbled streets.