Montreal: Is an island, the meeting point of the Saint Lawrence River and Ottawa River. One of 234 Hochelaga Archipelago. 193 square miles. 30 miles long and 10 miles wide. Connected by 20 bridges. Is the second-largest city in Canada next to Toronto. Toronto: 3.3 million residents, over 6.6 million in the Greater Toronto Area. Montreal: 1.7 million, about 4.3 million in the total metro area. Montreal is 315 miles east northeast of Toronto, 122 miles west of the national capital, Ottawa, and 160 miles southwest of the provincial capital, Quebec City. Takes name from Mount Royal, a triple-peaked mountain around which this settlement grew. 90% are fluent in French, and 59% can speak both French and English. Is #2 to to Paris in French-speaking population. You'd never guess the #3 city of Francophobes? Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Named UNESCO City of Design in 2006. There are two others, in Berlin and Buenos Aires. 12th mos...
I first came to Montreal in 1969. I was then in graduate school at LSU, and had some time off, so decided to drive up from Baton Rouge to Montreal with a stop to catch Woodstock. To quote: We heard some rumors about Woodstock being kind of crowded and maybe even a mess, with a storm approaching. Interstate 87 went directly to Montreal, almost 400 miles away. At Kingston, only about ten miles from Woodstock, we saw that the traffic to get off was a problem, so we continued on to Montreal. That's one of the better decisions I've ever made. Then again, we missed three days that defined my generation. Maybe I should have made that turn off the freeway. I had just escaped the draft by re-becoming a student towards a PhD in biochemical engineering. I wasn't adventurous enough . So back to our current trip, checked out of the Azamara Journey and caught a cab to the Le Centre Sheraton Montreal , which is in the center of ...