Montreal Botanical Gardens

When I was in Montreal, I wanted to check out their Botanical Garden. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Botanical_Garden

It is in the Olympic Stadium.  Seriously this place is really impressive.  I am not an expert about gardens but this has to be the best one or at least in the top 5 in the entire world.  First of all the place is enormous.  You can easily spend a day there looking around seeing plants from all over the Americas.  Thankfully with your ticket, you can come back another time. They have an Insectarium which basically houses insects.  I didn't have enough time to check it out though.  =(

You see these things all over the garden.

I think this guy is a beekeeper?

Here is a piano.

These are actually apples!

These are the Moai from Easter Island.  Pretty neat.

Cool fountain and frogs!

Mother Earth.

This one was really impressive.

 Here are some ducks!

Faucet watering the flowers!

This one has to be the more impressive one in the whole park.  

It is really huge!

So they actually had a garden with poisonous plants.  Yup.  Actual real plants that are very dangerous.  This is a testament to how they roll in Canada.  They obviously have enough confidence in the visitors that they will not do something stupid like touch it.  You would NEVER EVER see this kind of thing where the public can easily access it in the mighty US of A.  Did I mention that they had MANY poisonous plants?  Here are a handful, and there were quite a few more that were there.

Poison Hemlock

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conium

Here is the plant where you can make Ricin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_oil_plant

Here is the Poison Ivy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_ivy

Poison Sumac.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_sumac

Lily of the Valley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_of_the_valley

We saw some foxes in the gardens also!  

I would have gotten more pictures but my camera battery was dying.  =(

Lastly they have this gargantuan greenhouse.  

I swear to you this is the biggest by far I have ever seen.  It seemed like a dozen were connected.

Sorry about the lesser quality of the following pictures.  

My good camera died so I had to use my phone.

They had lots of Bonsai trees.  Note the wires holding them "just so".

Here is another mini tree.

Chinese Elm.

Here is the Pitcher Plant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcher_plant

The unique thing with this plant is that it is actually a carnivore.  It traps and eats flies!

Montreal 2013

Hello Internet-land!  I just got back from Montreal Canada!  

It was really interesting place to live because they meld 2 very different cultures nicely.  Driving wise- the signs are in French (the official language is French).  Everywhere else, everything is posted both in English and French.  Everyone speaks French and most people speak English.  Puerto Rico was another place that reminded me how 2 cultures can co-exist.  In Los Angeles, people make broad assumptions and usually assume you are a certain culture and just start talking to you whatever language.  In Montreal, most people have either French or English people in their families and get along pretty good and make effort to know each other's language and culture.   In the restaurants you see the menu in both languages.

Here is a picture of their downtown.  It is like NYC but fewer people, less traffic, waaaay less graffiti, barely any litter, people bike often, and cleaner air.

 Here is a picture of their "Old Town".  

Old buildings and lots of good places to eat.

Here is an M3 with tons of parking tickets.  

Too bad the car doesn't have a garage...

I am surprised that they didn't tow the car.  If that happened in Los Angeles, the car would have ended up impounded.

 Not too far away from the M3, was the Place Jacques-Cartier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_Jacques-Cartier

That day was the Jewish Holiday Rosh Hashanah and kind of cold so I suspected that is why the square was rather empty. 

Up the walk a bit was the City Hall.  Really nice place. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Hall_of_Quebec_City

Here are their gas prices for the record. 

 

 So as you can see it is $1.46/Liter of gasoline.  Keep in mind there is 3.8L in 1 Gallon.... so that comes out to a whopping $5.55/gallon... and somehow I am guessing that is not premium.

 Here is the Montreal Biosphere.  

Not to be confused by the Biodome.  The Biodome is close to the Olympic Park.  This one is close to the Casino. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Biosph%C3%A8re

Here is their Casino!  It doesn't look like one that is for sure.  When I went inside it was kind of depressing.  It reminded me of a Dave and Busters with hoards of senior citizens.  There were lots of slot machines, which didn't use coins.  It definitely was not exciting in the least.  One of the things that wierded me out the most was the fact that THE ALCOHOL WAS DISPENSED ELECTRONICALLY.  When I first saw the bartender use this electronic device to measure out your hard liquor I was kinda disturbed.  Even the bartender was kind of ashamed that they had that system.  Speaking of alcohol, of course the drinks were weak.  Booooo!  At least they were not expensive @ $8 a pop.  Throughout the province of Quebec, hard liquor is tightly controlled.  They sell their liquor though "State Stores" (more grumbling) and close at 10pm.



Here is the Biodome (on the left) and they have this observation elevator going up.  This was pretty neat because there are 4 eco-systems!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodome_Montreal



Here is the Capybara.  It is actually a rodent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capybara

Here is a beaver.  He was sleeping

Piranhas!

The croc was sleeping.

The weather inside is really tropical @ 60% humidity.  You can smell it!

This little frog is called the Dyeing poison frog. 

Native Americans would use it as poison for their tools to kick ass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrobates_tinctorius

Atlantic Sturgeon. 

http://espacepourlavie.ca/en/biodome-fauna/atlantic-sturgeon

King Penguins.  These guys were just looking up.

They are actually pretty big animals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_penguin

Here are some more Penguins.  

They looked like they were having fun.

Sorry about the flash.  I took this picture with my crappy phone.  I thought Air Canada was cool for having those power ports.  Unfortunately they don't give you a place to put your device that you are charging.  I also liked the map showing where you are at.

Here is the nasty soggy "pizza" that was $8. 

Bring your own food with this airline.

See Downtown LA?

 

Here it is zoomed in.  Loving that smog!