Tourism

Our VIP guests arrived safe and well - we'll call them Nifty and Pearl.  The children are especially pleased to have their grandparents here lavishing them with fun and attention!

It's not easy to be a tourist where you live because you're pretty wrapped up in your day to day life but today we thought we'd give it a go.  Nifty had read that an area called "The Plateau" looked like an interesting endroit to check out.  I've not been there before but had heard that it was a funky, artsy kind of place but without any particular major monument or attraction.  Just somewhere interesting to wander around and grab a nice bite to eat.

Unfortunately it didn't work out that way.  We found the area to be quite dumpy and run down and a lot of the restaurants and shops weren't opening until midday.  There seriously weren't many redeeming features.

To top off a shoddy outing, the traffic going home was terrible.  We had to be home in time to meet the school bus so we'd left an hour to get home and lucky we did because we made it with about 5 minutes to spare!  Next time we head into the city, I think we'll try a more "targeted" approach to sight seeing!

The day wasn't all lost, we did pick up some of those amazing bagels from St Vivateur's and I had a closer look the Bixi Bikes.

Bixi bikes are public bike system that seems to be a very popular alternate means of transport.  The bikes are available between April and November and there are over 400 stations across the city with over 5100 bikes.  You can pay per trip or subscribe for the season.  What a fab idea!

xx