Last night in Montreal... we will be back

We walked all over Montreal's city parks today. We started at Summit park, which is a bird sanctuary. There are more birds in spring when they migrate, but I heard many. The one I identified by song is a scarlet tanager, if I am right. Lots of wildflowers in this maple/beech/birch forest, and it seems to be early wild fungi season!

Then we walked all overPark du Mont-Royal. Fredrick Law Olmstead designed this park, and did a great job. It has lots of lawns and open spaces, also thickly forested trails. There are also great views of Montreal and la Rive Saint-Laurent (aka the Saint. lawrence River). There was a rather cute snake slithering across the trail (black with a yellow head), and two woodpeckers came very close to us, apparently doing a mating ritual on a tree.

Montreal is beautiful, friendly. It has excellent community gardens, bike paths and a great public transit system. It is a multicultural city, although it doesn't seem as diverse as Toronto (what is?) It has a lot to offer. We do feel like there's been some kind of cultural shift since our last visit 17 years ago (yup.) It seems to have lost some of its quirky uniqueness and moved a bit more towards chain store/generic world market culture, As I said last night, where are the street musicians and performers? Also, there seem to be far more panhandlers than last time... hard times? What can I say? I am basing this on a two day visit and may be totally off the wall. Also, San Francisco, sadly, has also lost much of its uniqueness and has become much more stratified during the same time period - this is not just a Montreal problem. Both places remain fascinating, and deserve a visit...may their good points survive!

Tomorrow we head to Quebec Sity for a night, then we head up to the St. Lawrence River/ Sagueney Fjord area for three days. Then we'll return to Montreal for one more evening.

Oh yes, my French is somewhat better than my Spanish. I can read French adequately. I speak it with a Pittsburgh accent, and I sometimes start a sentence in French and end it in Spanish. The exact opposite happens in Mexico! Aomehow I get by. Kate is better with languages, especially Spanish than I am... maybe she's the reason I'm still wandering!