It's pissing rain like crazy today so I thought it would be a good morning to hang out in the cafe and blog for a while. In the afternoon I might go to a film at the Indie cinema, and this evening I'm going to a meetup for people who are new to Montreal -- I thought that might be fun.

Anyway, on we go...

27.05.04
This morning I met Alan at McGill Station and we went to the Olympic Park. We first checked out the Biodome. This place has all these little artificial ecosystems with animals and all kinds of information about them. It was really interesting, and you could walk through most of these places. There was a tropical forest, which was warm and humid, there were damp trees and leaves dangling everywhere, and the air had a sweet, musty smell; that kind I like. There were lots of bright-coloured birds and these tiny, furry, orange monkeys they called Golden Lion Tamarin. I also saw these little things about as big as a medium-sized dog, but they looked kind of like pigs with longer hair. Alan said they were called Capybara. They seemed pretty mellow, just walking around and eating and walking around some more, like they had no place to go and nothing to worry about. We also saw alligators lolling around in the water and some huge turtles. They also had some terrarium things with pretty frogs and some huge snakes. This one snake was huge, thicker than my arm, and bright green, and it was coiled tight around a branch. I couldn't even see where it ended or began. It was really pretty. I didn't get to find out anything about it, or even what it was called, because the place was crawling with kids and they were pushing and shoving everywhere. I wanted to feed a few to this bright green snake.

The next section was Laurentian Forest, and it was light and a bit chilly, but it was very familiar. There were more birds, different kinds of ducks, and a sleeping lynx. At first I didn't see it, but Alan pointed out something furry on a rock. I just saw a leg, and thought maybe it was a rabbit sleeping in some strange position. Then the leg kind of stretched and the pads on the paw extended out like a fan, and I thought, if that's a rabbit's foot, it's a fucking huge rabbit! Then its head came up, probably to watch a prospective meal, and I could see its distinctive pointy ears and face. Very pretty. There were also some more reptiles and a couple of caves of bats. You walked through a dark tunnel and on either side was a glass enclosure with some low, red lights and you could see the bats hanging there and flying around. It was cool, because you couldn't really see the glass, so when a bat came flying at you, you had to instinctively duck. There was also a porcupine curled up asleep on a rock, and we saw a couple of beaver dams, but didn't see any beaver.

The St. Lawrence Marine Ecosystem was very cool. There were more ducks, lots of fish of varying sizes (mmm, sashimi!), and a tank with all kinds of sea urchin and funky-looking marine plants I didn't recognize. The coolest thing was standing in front of this huge tank with fish in it, and every once in a while a duck would dive down to the bottom to find food. It would flap its wings to propel itself downward, as if it were flying, and it's feathers glowed and glittered like silver and goldleaf. It would get to the bottom and pick at something for a while, and then eventually it would put its wings to its sides and rocket gracefully up to the surface. It looked elegant and magical, like a mermaid, but with shiny feathers and tiny air bubbles cascading around it like magical sparkles and glitter. I keep seeing this whole image in my mind -- the duck flapping down to the water and then soaring back to the top. I wish I had a movie camera to film it with. Later we were walking on the upside of the tank and saw the ducks floating around on the water, and you would see one dive down and watch it splash back up. I was really surprised to see that they were just brown ducks, and there wasn't a single bit of silver or white or grey or anything on their feathers. The glittering must have just been the water and light reflection - their feathers are oily so they don't get waterlogged.

My other favourite was the "Polar World" which simulated the Arctic on one side and Antarctic on the other. There were a lot of Auks (I know them as "puffins", so I'm wondering now if those are two different birds? I didn't get a chance to check.) These were adorable! They kind of look like penguins but a bit smaller and their beaks are shaped differently. They fly a little but they're very uncoordinated, which is probably why I found them so endearing . When they hop from rock to rock, or across a chasm, they flap their wings a little to help, but other than that, they don't fly much. I did see a few dive off a very high rock and into the water, but those seemed to be the really daring ones. Mostly they just waddled around. And they swam! They dart around under the water like rockets, and they do crazy things like sharp twists and turns. They were really fun to watch. We also saw King Penguins and Rockhopper Pengins. King penguins are the ones you see in movies all the time, and Rockhopper penguins are the ones that have the funny tufts of feathers on the sides of their heads. Penguins don't fly at all, but they are amazing swimmers. We watched them for about 20, maybe 30, minutes. They would even do dives right out of the water and back again, like dolphins, and sometimes would twist in the air. A couple of the penguins really seemed to show off: The viewing area was tiered so you could go down to the glass below the water level and see them swim up close. The penguins would see a group of people crouched there and swim right over and splash and nod their heads right at you, then go off and do acrobatics. It was really funny, as if they were trying to get your attention and say, "watch me, look what I can do!!"

After the Biodome, we went up the Tour de Montreal. You take a furniculaire on the outside of the building, kind of like the one in Quebec City, only this one is going higher and faster!! At the top, are some great views of the city. What an interesting building, too... I guess they hold it up with cables or soemthing -- I could see them from below when we walked under it later on. After the tower, we walked around the Botanical Gardens. The Burlington RBC is nothing like the gardens in Montreal. The Montreal gardens are huge! I think we spent about 2 or 3 hours walking around these gardens. The best part was this little Japanese Garden and pavillion. There was a cool exhibit about Green Tea - how it's grown, harvested, made, how green tea is brewed properly, tea ceremonies, etc. They had some great exhibits of old tea pots and cups and stuff. There was a beautiful garden with an area where they could do a tea ceremony that you could participate in, but they only do it on weekends. There was also a garden with a pond that had a stream coming out of it, and the stream meandered all around until it came around and flowed back into the pond again. You could follow a path and walk all around it... some areas of the stream were calm and serene, some had dramatic waterfalls, some had sharp bends and turns, and in some places the water flowed easily down tiers of stone platforms, or rumbled energetically over rocks. There were wooden bridges and pebbled shores, and large rocks you could stand or sit on, and in some spots were little shelters where the signs said you could sit and think, or "poets could meditate and invite inspiration..." Everything was surrounded by trees, bushes and flowers. The water was supposed to represent the continuous flow of life where some times are calm and easy, some times are chaotic and restless, some times are somewhere in between. Some times things go smoothly and sometimes things are dynamic or difficult. There was also a lantern cared out of stone, and it represented the light of knowledge. I loved this place.

We also walked through a Bonsai Garden. There were some pretty cool ones. Alan said he liked the ones that looked like mini-forests. I have to agree that they were neat - I liked staring at them and wondering what it would be like to be a mini-person in the mini-forest. I also liked the ones where the roots are on top of the soil, all tangled and woven around each other. If you picked one, it would be impossible to follow it to the spot where it went into the ground.

After the gardens, we finished off with the Insectisarium. There they had all kinds of bugs, obviously. they had lots of butterflies, including a cool display about Monarchs and the yearly migration. This was cool because I was telling Alan earlier about the Monarch migration - how they fly deep into the south part of the continent and hang out there for the winter, and then come back up to Canada. We got to see a lot of little containers with live bugs in them, too. Lots of big beatles and hairy spiders. Some of the beatles were huge and had these huge fucking horns on their heads!

After the Insectisarium, we were exausted. We had been in this place for about 6 or 7 hours I think. We treked up to Mile End to see where the bagel bakeries were, then had a late lunch (early dinner, I guess) at a deli downtown. We were going to go to Old Montreal and see the lights but we were too tired so we parted ways. Alan goes back to Scotland tomorrow and it's a long trip. I wished him well and went back to the hostel. Now it's 8pm and I think I am going to read and go to bed. What I do tomorrow depends on the weather.

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