After waking up at the Humaniti and having breakfast, we took the metro to visit the Bisophere, which was under renovation. We then took the metro and bus to Mile End where we had bagels from both St-Viateur and Fairmount. We ended the day with poutine at La Banquise and snacks in Chinatown.
Morning
We woke up in the morning to mostly clear skies.
The complimentary Platinum and higher breakfast at the Humaniti includes one main menu item and a coffee and juice. We went for the Canadian breakfast, which includes American rather than Canadian bacon, and a French omelette. Everything was very good.
The restaurant is located above ground level. We had a view of a tree-like sculpture by the south side of the building.
We headed out about an hour after finishing breakfast. Our first destination is Crew Collective & Cafe. As the name suggests, it is a coworking space as well as a cafe.
We turned left after exiting the hotel and walked by the tree sculpture that we saw at breakfast.
We walked by La Joute, which we saw yesterday.
We briefly popped into the World Trade Centre Montréal. This building contains a mall as well as a piece of the Berlin Wall! This section was donated by Berlin to the city in 1992 for its 350th anniversary.
We continued on to the next block to find the Crew Collective & Cafe. It is located in a former bank building. This looks like a bank! It even says it is a bank above the entrance. But, this is not the correct bank.
The name above the door, Molson, may seem familiar. The family founded the Molson Brewery which survives as part of Molson Coors, the world’s 3rd largest brewer in 20161. William Molson, who founded this bank, was the son of John Molson who created the brewery.
The correct bank building is actually next door. This much larger building was built in 1928 and contained the Royal Bank of Canada.
Ah, Latin. This says “From Sea to Sea” and is apparently Canada’s national motto.
We ordered a macchiato and a pistachio latte. It wasn’t as good as the % ARABICA coffee that we had in Seoul earlier this year. It is a rather high bar to beat though.
The cafe is located in front of former bank teller windows.
There are more teller windows off to the side in the coworking space. There wasn’t anyone working, likely because it is a Sunday.
Biosphere
After leaving the bank, we started to head to the Biosphere. It is located on an island in the St. Lawrence River and is accessible by Metro. The closest metro station is Square Victoria-OACI, which we passed by yesterday.
We saw this statue of Queen Victoria yesterday. It seemed like it was fenced off at the time but it was not.
We headed down into the Metro using the historic Parisian entrance.
We took Line 2 (Orange) to Berri-UQAM. Here, we transferred to the very short Line 4 (Yellow). The Yellow Line simply runs under the St. Lawrence River and has only 3 stations – here, on the island containing the Biosphere, and on the other side of the river.
After exiting the station, we immediately saw the Biosphere. And a huge blue chair!
It turns out that there is construction activity going on at the Biosphere. We ended up having to circle around the structure’s east side to get to an entrance.
Informational panels in the lobby provide some background on the Biosphere. It was originally built as the United States Pavilion for Expo 67. Clearly an important event for Montreal as they named their new baseball team, the Expos, after it! This team has since moved on to Washington DC and is now known as the Washington Nationals. Its not really a better name and their new logo is basically the Walgreens logo. The Biosphere structure was donated to Montreal after the expo ended and ultimately became a museum in 1995.
The Biosphere was designed by Buckminster Fuller and Japanese American architect Shoji Sadao. Buckminster Fuller was really into geodesic domes as strong but lightweight structures and is credited with coming up with the term. Buckyballs, or Buckminsterfullerene, is a molecule consisting of 60 carbon atoms and was named after Buckminster Fuller.
It turned out that much of the Biosphere museum was closed due to renovation activities. Of course, the entrance fee was still full price. We decided to pay it and go in as we were already here.
There was an exhibition titled The Salmon of the Mitis River, which consisted of informational panels illustrating the lifecycle of salmon.
The next room contained an interactive exhibit titled Watersheds! Follow the Flow. Basically, you get a ball which activates various displays. It is intended for children and not particularly interesting as an adult.
Another exhibition that we were able to visit is Cosmic Plankton. It is basically an audio visual exhibit which depicts plankton and space. It’s a bit weird.
The final area of the Biosphere that we could visit was the Panoramic Room on the 5th floor. The door leading to the outside area was marked as closed, however, there happened to be staff inside at the time who said we could go outside. So we did!
The Biosphere was originally fully enclosed by clear acrylic panels. They were destroyed during a fire in 1976. However, the metal structure that is here today survived.
There is quite a bit of work going on at the museum building within the Biosphere.
Downtown Montreal, as seen from within the Biosphere.
The Panoramic Room itself is mostly empty other than some seating.
During our visit, we picked up these two sided hexagonal cards. They are supposed to be used somehow to decode a secret message. We forgot about these before we left and didn’t do anything with them. Oops!
There was a Lamborghini coffee vending machine in the lobby by the bathrooms, which we noticed on our way out. Apparently, Tonino Lamborghini is the son of Ferruccio Lamborghini, the founder of the car manufacturer. The Tonino Lamborghini company makes watches and various other accessories as well as “luxury beverages“.
Other than the Biosphere, the island containing the museum has parkland on the southern two-thirds. The remaining portion up north is occupied by an amusement park. There is another adjacent island to the east which has more parkland.
While the Biosphere structure itself is interesting, the museum is really a school trip kind of place. Its pretty skippable unless you happen to be already visiting the island for the parks, which makes more sense in seasons that aren’t winter.
We circled around the west side of the Biosphere to return to the Metro station. This seemed to be a shorter walk.
Is this a bird house contained within a larger house?
This sign, which was nearby, lists various bird species that can be found here. Most of these same birds can also be found at home in Maryland.
Rather than return to the Metro, we decided to keep on walking to check out this oddly shaped sculpture to the southwest.
This sculpture, seemingly a jumble of steel panels, is Trois Disques (Three Discs) by Alexander Calder, an artist from Pennsylvania. It was created for Expo 67 and was commissioned by the International Nickel Company of Canada.
Google Maps describes this sculpture as “a gift from France”, however, no other source seems to support this. It isn’t entirely surprising that something on Google might be very incorrect.
Just beyond the sculpture, there are a few blue chairs by the St. Lawrence River with a view of downtown Montreal.
We turned around and started to walk back to the Metro station, seen here in the distance in front of the Biosphere.
Mile End
We entered the Metro station to head to the Mile End neighborhood. The station was totally empty when we entered, which was a bit creepy. We took the Yellow Line back to Berri-UQAM where we transferred to Line 1 (Green).
We took the Green Line to Place-des-Arts. While trying to find the nearby bus stop for #80, which runs along Avenue du Parc, we came across a horde of pigeons engaged in a tight feeding frenzy. We couldn’t tell exactly what they were pecking at.
The bus stop was temporarily relocated to a nearby street. There were many other people waiting here so we knew we had the right spot.
We got off the bus at Du Parc / Fairmount and walked a long block or so to St-Viateur Bagel. This bagel shop is famous for making Montreal style bagels. What is the difference from regular bagels? We’re about to find out!
We soon made it to the head of the queue and bought two bagels – all dressed and sesame. They’re very different from bagels in New York! They aren’t salty and are just a little bit sweet. The all dressed was different from expected as it isn’t like an everything bagel at all. It is significantly less salty and not nearly as flavorful. The sesame bagel had a pretty good sesame flavor from all the sesame seeds, almost a bit like a Chinese sesame ball.
After getting our bagels, we decided to walk around the neighborhood.
A bunch of car mirrors attached to… Something… Attached to a utility pole?
St-Viateur actually has a second location nearby, about 4 small blocks away. We didn’t go for a closer look but maybe we should have? Also of interest here, the colorful mural on the adjacent cookie shop’s wall. Look closely, there’s quite a bit going on there!
We came across Ubisoft‘s Montreal office!
Another colorful mural.
Is this Emperor Palpatine‘s shop?
We noticed a huge queue in front of what seems like a Christmas themed restaurant, La Taverne de Noël! This is Le Petit Dep which is temporarily transformed into The Christmas Tavern for the season.
This building, which looks a bit like a castle or even a church, is actually a museum for the Pompiers Auxiliaires de Montréal (Montreal Auxiliary Firefighters). Judging from the three large doors in front, this is a former fire station.
This nearby building, with a park in front, is the Saint-Enfant-Jesus (Holy Child Jesus), a Catholic church. The exterior looked a bit unkempt with fallen leaves everywhere, some trash on the ground, and a bit of graffiti on the building.
We ended up backtracking a bit to visit Fairmount Bagel which was nearby. Like St-Viateur, this is a famous Montreal bagel bakery. We noticed a very long queue out front. After further investigation, the queue is for Drogheria Fine, which sells little takeout boxes of gnocchi!
Fairmount Bagel wasn’t busy and we were able to quickly get two bagels. This time we got sesame and onion. It was pretty similar to St-Viateur, though we think St-Viateur was a bit better.
From here, we decided to walk to La Banquise for some poutine.
A large mural and some grafitti…
Captain Montreal?
Finally, La Banquise! There was a good sized queue out front which ended up taking about 30 minutes. La Banquise is perhaps the most famous poutine restaurant in Montreal. They have a huge variety of options, about 35!
bacon, onions, swiss cheese & sour cream
We ordered The Savoyard and The Classic.
Evening
After our early poutine dinner, it was time to head back. We walked over to the Mont-Royal Metro station to take the Orange Line to Place-d’Armes, the station closed to Chinatown.
We started out with some tea from Chatime where we ordered the lychee green tea. This location was not nearly as fancy as the Chatime we recently visited in Amsterdam with its automated tea delivery system! Like the other bubble tea shops that we’ve visited here in Montreal, Chatime is from Taiwan.
We next returned to Dingxiang for the lamb skewers. Unlike beef, one order is 5 skewers. The meat wasn’t as good as the beef but we still enjoyed it. Although, like the beef, it was a bit too salty.
We ended the evening with a visit to Presotea‘s larger location where we got a wintermelon grass jelly tea.
- Molson Coors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molson_Coors ↩︎