Our first stop for several hours in Montreal was in this Museum - Pointe-A-Calliere Montreal Archaeology and History Complex. It's a complex of 6 buildings with the building above being the entrance. For the other spaces we were mostly under the buildings.
We started with the multi-media show. Each of those spaces on the screens were filled with different images or joined to make a larger image. There were several school groups there, too.
I didn't take a lot of photos inside the museum, lighting difficult, until we got to the Fort Ville-Marie in the Quebecor Pavilion. Here there were glass floors and you can look at the several different layers of excavations made at the original site of Montreal.
To get to and from the above exhibit space we had to walk through this former sewer. When Montreal was first settled this was a small stream teaming with fish. Later it was used as a waste dump. Walls were built along the sides to contain the waste stream, then it was covered over and served as a sewer for a very long time, emptying into the St. Lawrence River.
Another exhibit space over archaeological excavations used lights to show the outlines of buildings that were in that space over the history of Montreal.
Below is the Old Custom House which was one of the buildings in the museum complex.
We grabbed sandwiches at a sandwich shop. None of the fancier restaurants were open for lunch. We walked around the Old City afterward noting the architecture like this place below.
And the building next to it.
Against the sides of several buildings we could see the ghost remains of others that once stood there too.
We came upon this plaza - the Place d'Armes - opposite the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal. The statues commemorated the earliest founders.
We've been through lots of churches in our travels and chose not to pay the high price to enter this one.
The Bank of Montreal was opposite.
We came upon one pedestrian street. There are others in the city. This one definitely geared to the tourists.
We had parked at the public lot at the Science Museum on one of the quays. Here's a view of the old city with new construction looming over it.
And another look back at the museum.
We left town in mid afternoon and the rush hour traffic had already started complicated by lots of road construction.
Our overnight accommodations were in Beloeil, suburb. We could walk two blocks to find at least 4 restaurants to choose from though on Tuesday only two of these were open. We opted for one with an Italian flair to their dishes and shared a Caesar salad, mushroom soup, and a pizza. Thankfully the wait staff knew some English as we had lots of questions about the menu written in French.
