Got back in one piece. Spent today doing the Shopping Mall shuffle.
Which is really depressing when you consider that two weeks ago, I was viewing the city from an outstanding vantage point here:
That’s St Joseph’s Oratory which is located just behind the crest of the peak that has the park of Mount Royal. That peak is what gives Montreal its name. ( Mont Real). From here its a nice walk in the park.
Come on and see!
A history of the church can be found here. At 263m (863 ft.), the shrine of St. Joseph is the highest point in Montreal. Its dome is second in size only to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. As you can see it has a lot of steps up to the main “porch”. One of the more interesting traditions is that pilgrims will come to climb the 100 center steps-praying the rosary all along the way:
My knees are not up for that! Besides I’d love to see the statistics of people injured vs people healed for making the pilgrimage. Nonetheless, the pilgrims hope that the reputed healing powers of Brother Andre will be bestowed upon them.
Once inside, you can see both the chapel below and the basilica above. The upstairs is quite impressive-but don’t miss the church down stairs either. We took some time to see the upstairs church though:
And watch a choir sing for its supper:
Afterwards we drove over to the park near the summit. That happens to be a great place for people watching:
There were a lot of Filipinas-or women that looked like Filipinas- in the park, which made me wonder what the deal was with that. It did not seem in order with what I would think was a normal population distribution. Maids on the day off? I did not think so. Montreal also seemed to have one heck of a lot of Chinese-or people of Chinese ancestry, which, given its lanugage history, I found most interesting. I do realize a lot of that came from the exodus from Hong Kong before the turnover and from Canada’s easier immigration laws-but still.
It was also a good place for dog watching:
And for walks around the lake:
Which helped get you to the right angle for surreptious shots of girls in bikinis:
And, no, that is not me sitting behind her leering though the sunglasses.
At, or actually near the summit you can get a good view of Montreal:
A really good view!
And at the summit you can see the Cross they erected-lit up at night:
For the amount of time it took to get there-I was not so impressed with it. Just a another steel tower with lights, if you ask me.
We walked back down the trail seeing the horsemounted women police:
We also took a turn through the Mont Royal cemetary-which is huge. Cementaries are not my “to do” list-but this one has a lot of city history buried in it and is beautifully maintained:
All of which made us quite hungry which was how we got the excellent dinner I showed earlier.