A day out in Montreal - then the road to Renshaw

We the made our way; on the very efficient and frequent Montreal metro system; to Viau on Eastern side of Montreal where the Olympic Stadium is situated. We went into the Biodome, a climate controlled building with 4 different habitats inside representing the 4 different climate areas in the Americas. First rainforest.. really humid and hot and with Capybara, parrots, a two toed sloth, caymen and a multitude of fish, trees and plants. Then temperate forest with otters, beaver, more birds, plants and trees. Then tundra.. cold and dry with puffins and other sea birds, an enormous aquarium with the most gigantic sturgeon and other sea fish and a rocky sea shore with an enormous variety of different sea cucumbers, crabs, anenomes and starfish. Finaly arctic (fortunately behind glass so we didn't freeze) with penguins, Rockhoppers and Humboldt. The best bit for me was the above and below water veiwing of the beaver swimming around and finally going up into his/her lodge. He/she looks like she has her lips pursed into a kiss and she holds her front paws close to her chest as if holding the reins of a pretend horse (or praying), then a lazy flick of one back webbed foot propells him/her smoothly but with speed through the water. The penguins also put on a show in their above and below viewing tank too, whizzing around making leaps up out of the water and finishing by leaping up onto the shore to land neatly upright (except for one that toppled over and then looked around self consciously, reentered the water, did one loop and repeated its exit, perfectly this time; as if to prove that really it could be done!)
Following this we walked about 10 minutes up to the Botanical Gardens and spent an engrossing 1 1/2 hours in the Insectarium with the largest collection of creepy crawlies I've ever seen (heaven for Celso). My favourites were the scarab beetles in green and orange (I've seen them in films of Egypt before and always thought how fake they looked but they really are that brightly coloured and really shiny.)
Celso insisted on buying a packet of crickets (dead and roasted, cheese and bacon falvour) to eat, and Tristan reminded me how I'm always telling him to give new things a try, at least a small taste I say; and so I couldn't really back out of having a little nibble... tasted like dry cardboard and the boys didn't think much of them either.
We headed down to the old quarter and wandered around the streets filled with market stalls, street performers and artists. The grand hotel was being worked on with scaffolding covering it but, because it is meant to be one of the finest buildings, the scaffolding was then covered in a sheet with a picture of the building on.. Weird. There were street cafes, a man playing the accordian and an old woman trying to do some sort of sexy dancing to accompany him (but she looked more like she was having some sort of fit). Celso spent an age looking at wrist bands whilst Tris and I wandered the shops and listened to an Andean group playing traditional panpipe music.
We then walked up to the Chinese district and looked in loads of little shops. There were loads of Bhuddas (whose tummies we had to rub) and Celso wanted to get a Samurai sword but fortunately we have to fly into the US and I convinced him it would not be allowed. We found a Chinese restaurant filled with Chinese people so we went in and had an enormous meal, half of which we ended up taking home in a doggy bag. My fortune cookie said that I was going to travel!
Thursday. We left Montreal and headed back West towards Ottowa. About half an hour into our journey we saw a sign for the Arbraska adventure forest, with a picture of a man balancing on a rope strung between trees. We decided to go and investigate. You'll have to see the photos to really get the picture! I actually managed to get up into a tree, cross ropes and ladders and other wobbly obstacles in between trees and descend by zip wires. Celso and Tristan did a further 3 courses that went far too high for me to even contemplate. Exhilarating, scary, tiring, hand aching (from all the gripping on) and great fun. 3 hours later we were on our way again and finally we reached Renshaw having driven through Ottawa and deciding that we really didn't want to spend any more time in the city at the moment.