Our itinerary today is a trip to the Jardine Botanique, boasted as one of the finest Botanical gardens in the world. It’s a bit further out of the city so we opt to take an Uber.

 

 

 

 

We spend the morning walking around the different gardens. We particularly enjoy the China gardens. We can’t seem to find the Jardin Japonais, It’s meant to be one of the biggest outside Japan how do we keep missing it!

Finally we find it, we take a stroll through garden and watch the Koi.

As you walk round the gardens you can’t help but notice the tower of the Olympic stadium. Chris fancies a trip to the top via the funicular but is disappointed when he realises it is closed for maintenance until 2025.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our next stop of the day is a trip to the Biodome, with it’s 4 different climatic zones.

We start with a bite to eat, the restaurant is 100% vegetarian before heading to Maple Forest with the hopes of spotting Otters, Beavers, Canadian Lynx and Racoons. The otter is asleep, but is soon awakes when the keeper comes to do some training with Chris exclaiming , the otter speaks English! As the keeper uses English commands during training.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Beavers don’t disappoint, and their enclosure allows a view from both above and below.

The the Racoon is dozing, occasionally opening its eye to see what’s going on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are 3 playful Canadian Lynx, there is little information about the inhabitants but we believe them to be a mother and her children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We head to the Tropical zone, spotting caymen, capybara, macaws and our favourite the colourful poison fart frogs. Despite extensive looking up, we don’t spot the 2 toed sloth.

The final zone is noticeably colfer than the tropical zone, we are in the sub polar zone with a multitude of penguins, including ***king penguins (Ref a 1990s Harry Hill TV Burp episode Chris finds particularly amusing!)

It’s almost closing time so we head to the gift shop. Our purchase Benoit the Beaver (Named by Chris) a mascot to accompany us on the rest of our Canadian Journey

We need to get to the restaurant, Google says the quickest option is by car so we request an Uber, only to realise it was a mistake, the traffic is heaving.

We finally arrive, Uber telling us to be careful when opening the door as it opens onto a cycle lane (Montreal is consistently voted as one of the top cycling friendly North American cities. It’s a popular mode of transport)

Our restaurant for the evening is ChuChai, One of Montréal’s 1st Vegetarian restaurant. It’s now a fully vegan thai restaurant. We start with a tasting platter, including the award winning miami kram, mango salad, dumpling in peanut sauce, yellow curry samosa and our particular favourite crispy seaweed in a sticky sauce. Next up mains and we share one of the favourites Crispy “Duck” and King Pad Thai. We finish with the classic battered Banana with maple syrup and “Cheesecake” for Chris.

Last stop of the evening is Arcade MTL, where we spend a couple of hours playing old Arcade games, before heading back to the hotel. We are leaving early tomorrow heading to the next stop on the trip Quebec City.

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