If you thought that last night’s two drivers were unusually friendly and helpful, then the encounters today have topped all of that off in spades, I’ll tell you that.

I was up at the crack of dawn this morning (lucky dawn!) and after a good shower I set to work. First thing to do was to try to remember my nocturnal ramblings. I was in van somewhere in England (yes, England, not the UK) and I was on a photography expedition going somewhere but every time that I tried to take a photograph my camera fell apart and thos kept on happening with monotonous regularity. There was one place that I particularly remembered – a tiny village in a low valley where the road took a sharp right-hand bend right by the village green where there was a telephone box.

But anyway, enough of that for now.

The breakfast room at the hotel was crowded and we ran out of coffee and jam – and I remembered to make something of a little note about this – but while I was looking for the breakfast attendant I came across a second breakfast room which had apparently been missed by everyone else because it was quite empty.

With it being Sunday, the buses didn’t start running until late so it gave me an opportunity to have a good session on the computer and catch up on a few things. I had a good look out of the window too, and I do have to say that the view from here is one of the best that I can hope to have.

It’s not as noisy as you might think with the new generation of jets, and it’s a shame that the big KLM jumbo jet takes off in the dark.

And then it was off to the town.

First stop was to buy some water where the girl at the cash desk gave a big sigh as I was counting out the cash. What a way to start the day, so I gave her a little “piece of advice”, as they say in the Police Farce.

I went onwards to the Tourist Information office for a map (I’d left mine behind) and there I fell in with a woman who was on her was from Vancouver to Newfoundland. She was travelling via the Trans-Canada Highway and so we had a spritied discussion about going via the Trans-Labrador Highway and across from Blanc Sablon.

In the Place Jacques Cartier just around the corner we were treated to some street musicians.

In fact every Saturday and Sunday during July and August various little groups of musicians entertain the crowds, and these five people are from one of the many music academies around the city. I do have to say that while their selection of music was not my type, I quite enjoyed the atmosphere – which is one of the best reasons to be here.

I had a wander off down to the Quai de l’Horloge to sit in the sun, lap up the atmosphere, watch the river and (most importantly) to eat my butties as it was now my kind of lunchtime.

There was plenty going on on the river – lots of marine traffic and the like, but nothing over about 15 tonnes which for me, at any rate, was something of a disappointment. Where’s the 150,000 tonne tanker when you need it?

And, if the truth was known, I had a little doze in the sunshine too. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that, and I find that the water is quite relaxing.

With nothing here worth photographing, I wandered off down to the Point by the clock tower to see what was in the docks and I was lucky in that the Algonova was there. She had been there for a while too, having come from Corner Brook in Newfoundland.

She might not look it, but she’s quite a modern ship, dating from as recently as 2007, and cost about $43,000,000, which is a lot of money to have sitting idle, tied up at the quayside.

So having mused on that for quite a while, I was all ready to move off when a couple of teenage girls squeezed in next to me. One of them was discreetly trying to look at my map so I let her have it.

We started off a conversation – ohhh yes, I can still chat up the females, even though, at my age, I can’t remember why- and of course, my plans to leave were completely abandoned.

Their parents joined in the chat too. They are from Winnipeg and visiting Montreal for a holiday. The chat quickly led to a much wider field and of course, Labrador came up in the chat. The Labrador Tourist Board ought to be paying me a commission.

Once everyone had cleared off, I went to have a look at my favourite building – the Gare Viger. They’ve knocked down a few more internal walls but that’s about all. Nothing much else is being done.

But here I had another one of those legendary encounters. Some woman van driver needed to do to an address in a street behind me, but it had all been cut off by roadworks and she wondered how she was going to get there. As soon asI openedmy mouth, she said “sorry, I didn’t realise that you weren’t local” – but as it happened, I did know the area where we were and I knew how to get to the address concerned.

And then she drove off with my rucksack and I had to run after her.

On the underground, I went to the Cartier metro station at Laval, to see the riviere des Praries. From the Pont Viau there were some lovely views with all kinds of things to see, including a car trying to drive up the cycle path.

There was a lot of maritime activity here too, including some water-skiing. And that I found quite astonishing. If the river has that much of a slope on it, how come Quebec Hydro hasn’t put a dam across it and fitted a few hydro turbos?

The end of the orange line at Montmorency is actually the big University campus at the back of Laval. Leaving the station, I went for a wander around but I didn’t stay too long. There wasn’t anything interesting (from my point of view) to see.

But there was a guy of my age pacing up and down outside.
"You look as if you are waiting for someone" I said
"Yes, my daughter" he replied
"Well, I’d forget about her and take someone else. I’ve seen a few girls that I wouldn’t mind taking home instead of my daughter."

Parking featured quite a lot on these pages at one time, and here’s a good example of street parking in North America.

Not so much of how the cars are parked but the size of the parking places. Anyone from Europe could park a lorry in spaces as big as this, never mind a compact car. It did remind me of the time that I reversed into a car parking space somewhere in the USA, watched by quite a crowd.

And someone asked me why I’d reversed in, to which I replied “because I can. I’m from Europe”.

There was an incident on the metro and traffic was “perturbed”. But eventually I arrived at Cote-des-Neiges and my plate of falafel, salad and chips. There was a football match on the TV, a Major League Soccer match. And I have to say that I wasn’t impressed. A couple of stars of European football having one last pay-day and a few local players, and it was all about Third or Fourth Division standard

In the Metro supermarket was a note – “due to Quebec Employment legislation, we are only allowed to employ a maximim of four people after 21:00, on Sundays and Public Holidays”. No-one in the supermarket thought that strange. But I can’t imagine any other Government, anywhere else in the western world, putting maximum limits on how many people are allowed to be employed in an enterprise in the middle of an employment crisis.

Another friendly, chatty bus driver on the way back and even though it was only 21.45 I crashed out yet again.

And what a nice day too. I’ve met loads of helpful, friendly people and had a few interesting chats with some very pleasant company.