8/24 Montreal, Canada

Great bike ride along the canal.  Love it.We survived Montreal  because we didn't eat here at Cafe ArsenikHard to believe how close these boats were parked.We both took dozens of photos of these entertaining birds.Our Chinatown Hotel in French speaking, Montreal Canada.You can rent a bike by putting money in the kiosk.

Everyone said Montreal was a beautiful city and they speak French, so we were kind of excited to visit it.  Rued the fact we wouldn't have a lot of time to spend there since it was going to be so nice. and we were making a specail trip.
Let me tell you, a city is a city.  Spent half our day just trying to do stuff we needed to do---like get to our hotel, find parking in the hotel garage.  We did get parking NEAR our hotel and then I looked up and saw we were in Chinatown.  This pleased Sandra to no end.  To me, it's REALLY true. If you've seen one Chinatown you've seen them all.  So we had to eat there, of course.  And then I was pleased because in the restaurant they sat us at a table with ladies who were speaking French, but also spoke to us in English. People were speaking English, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese etc. etc.  It reminded me that we are all such a tiny part of this huge world and in the end I was kind of glad we had landed ourselves in Chinatown.

Then we spent forever finding our hotel parking garage.  20 minutes later when we finally went down the correct one way street in the correct direction. Sandra says, "There it is", but the garage door was closed, so we pulled back out and left again.  20 minutes later we ended up there again convinced that that HAD to be the hotel parking.  Sandra then read a sign IN FRENCH ONLY that said, "Pull forward and the door will automatically open".  So that was frustrating.

I had read about a bike path along the canal in Montreal so we walked the bike from the hotel to the path and I did get to bike for over an hour on a wonderful bike path. And here's that experience from my bike's perspective.

Barbara and I started out on a walking/biking path with Sandra but then we ended up on a wonderful path around the canal that was only for bikes.  Made me feel special, but then I realized how can I be special if I don't even have a name.  So I asked Barbara to name me.  She looked up and there was a ship named Halifax.  Well you know the joke about the kid who asked his indian father how he got his name and what the father saw when he first looked out the next morning.  THAT'S what Barbara did to me.  The first thing she saw was a ship named Halifax. So my name is Halifax.  It was parked beside a beautiful ship named something exotic and French, but she couldn't even pronouce that, so I ended up with Halifax as my name.
She did at least ask for my opinion and I said it was OK.  Not great but OK and I guess it's kind of cool being named after a ship that's docked in Montreal, Canada.  It's a great ship and I'm a great bike, so it works.  So there it is, after all these years, I finally have a worthy name.  Now I just hope Barbara can remember it!!!!

Barbara and Sandra went out that night without me and had a great time within walking distance of the hotel.  A drunk directed then to where the action was and he was right.  Barbara wasn't sure he wasn't directing them to a specific location where he could then warn a buddy to be there and rob them.  But that was not the case.  He knew what he was talking about.  they ended up by the canal again but on a street with wonderful restaurants and street musicians and lots of night action.  It was the Montreal that people had told us about.  We were all glad we made the trip but have decided that it wouldn't bother us to never spend time in a big city again.  You spend half the time just figuring out how to get places.