Well, it's been quite a while since my last post - seems to have been a busy month! My parents were here for 4 days, over the Thanksgiving weekend - we had a great time with them, and showed them some of the highlights of what we had seen so far.
Olympic Stadium
Olympic Stadium
St Joseph's Oratory, as seen from the residential area just behind it. It's on the edge of a bluff, and so we can get right up close to it - very awe-inspiring!
Someplace we had not yet been to - Basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal. What a spectacular place!!
The stained glass is very thick and vibrant.
What's kept me most busy the last couple of weeks is finishing up my débutant français cours - my first foray into learning french!! I'm quite pleased with what I've learned - I was rather overwhelmed to start with, but things started making more sense by the end. Whew!!
Last weekend, while Jenn was visiting her parents in Ontario, I went for a ride on my bike, which I picked up for free next door (where it was sitting at the fence with a 'Free' sign), and which I've christened 'Simone'. She and I went for a ride to the islands in the river, where there's a park, an amusement park, and, most importantly, the Formula 1 track.
There is also a 'skydiving-without-a-parachute' place - there's a giant fan that blows straight up, and you end up hovering in the air above it - looks like good fun!!
The colours were gorgeous!
The islands were home to Expo '67, and one of the main remnants is the former American pavilion, a geodesic dome, designed by Buckminster Fuller, a fascinating and offbeat inventor/architect. The dome is now called the Biodome, a museum dedicated to educating people about the environment and the river. The common nickname for this type of dome is a "Bucky ball".
One of the displays inside was pretty cool - see if you can make sense of this before scrolling down..
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
And, to finish off, just a cool shadow of one of the many spiral stairs in town.
8 comments:
Way cool shots. Did you ride Simone on the Formula 1 Track? Did you "skydive"?
Sheri-Lee
Thanks, Sheri-Lee! Yes, I rode Simone around the track - most of the way, it's divided in half (with pylons), half for cars (limited to 30 kmh), and half for cyclists, roller bladers, wheelchair racers, and roller skiiers. In some parts, one or the other has possession of the track, while the other gets an alternative route. I was carefully checking out the views from the grandstand locations, in anticipation of actually buying tickets for the race in June!
No 'skydiving' for me yet - I might get to that sometime though!
C'est Magnifique!
*Cough*, I don't know if that's real French, but, congrats on that. And I echo S-L (she's cool): Nice shots.
yes, great pictures! I especially like the one of Simone. (How did you know it was a girl bike?)
There's no top cross bar Ellen. :P
Sheri-Lee
So you rode Simone all the way to the fair grounds, and then you didn't take her on an amusement park ride? Nice.
Well, just so you know, I haven't gone on the rides yet either. But I don't think Simone will be allowed on, as she's not 48" tall.
Thanks Sheri-Lee - yeah, it's much easier to tell the gender of a bike vs. say, an insect. Or a marijuana plant.
mmmmmmmm...... F1 Jim
Post a Comment