The more east the more French

I don't remember a thing about the drive from Ottawa to Montreal, the freeway is incredibly dull. Once we do arrive it doesn't improve much. The outskirts of town are a mass of crumbling graffiti-strewn overpasses criss-crossing around us choked with traffic and the now standard crazy driving. Downtown Montreal could be anywhere with it's long shopping street of the usual high street stores that ebbs away into unkempt buildings and littered streets. It's certainly busy though.
We try a couple of hotels but they're way out of our price range so it's an out of town motel once again. This is also pretty expensive in comparison to the US as well as being vastly worse. In fact it's one of the worst we've stopped in on the whole trip. It resembles one of those on-site cabins used by construction workers but a lot smaller, with the addition of water damage and mould along with a bullet hole in the window.
We escape the depressing accommodation to stroll around downtown and see what this place is all about. I was under the impression that Montreal would be full of French style buildings and cool streets but it wasn't at all, it was totally unimpressive. The French has stepped up a notch again here as although people can still speak English you can tell they're not too comfortable with it.
From the main shopping street we explore the small Chinatown, just one short pedestrianised street, and dive into a busy looking restaurant to eat some surprisingly great food. Things are looking up.
The sun of the day fades into early evening as we head to the Old Town area. This is much improved and is nearly what I imagined Montreal to be. Narrow cobbled streets shouldered by stone French buildings that have low lit restaurants full of grand artwork and people with a lot more money than us. Small boutiques leave their windows on at night to show of their window displays of quirky sales. Almost pub-like wrought iron signs swing from many a shop front along the streets that lead up to a large church and then down a wide pedestrianised collection of bars towards the waterfront. Winters here are also long and very cold, so on this moderate night it's no surprise people are drinking outside bars while they have the chance. The street is short, steep and lively and also marked with a statue of Nelson at one end. The French didn't seem to take too kindly to this so erected another statue to commemorate a French General that defeated the English. We continue on as a homeless guy approaches and begins to speak in French to us. We look bemused and just as he asks, "English?", I respond, "Don't bullshit me man, I don't care." His face took on shocked look and he seemed put a back for a moment. My patience with these people has completely run out. I have no interest in their business or time for their stories of hardship and lies. Back on the main shopping street we pass a lad in his early twenties crouched outside a shop shaking a tub full of change. I had to take a second look as this beggar was watching a film on a brand new iPod! I stop and look back. He turns to me and says, "It was a present". I laugh at the sheer ridiculous nature of it all. We pass another girl reading a book with a cardboard sign which reads, 'Need money for travel'. I've had enough of this. I need money for travel too but I'm not going to beg on the street for it. Besides, it'd probably be easier to just get a job. Further along another guy has a cardboard sign reading, 'Need money for pot'. It's all I can do to stop myself shouting in the faces of these people. From the horrors and misfortunes of Chinese beggars to seeing this lazy display of 'the world owes me a favour' attitude the people really do nothing to endear me to the Canadians or American way of life.
We have a quick look around the dull waterfront area before heading back to our hovel for the evening. We were originally planning on a two night stay here but we really have no reason to. The next morning we have to take a look at the city's parkas we'd heard good things about it.
Mount Royal is the park's name, which I presume is actually the name of the city itself once translated. It's a park on top of a hill that looks over the pretty dull city. The large lake here is still frozen which goes to show just how cold it must get here in winter, no wonder it's a popular cross country skiing place. From up here we can see the Olympic Stadium and the cycling velodrome, which has now been turned into a Biodome in which tropical plants of all types of boring nature now exist. In Manchester when we held the Commonwealth Games we built a velodrome. Instead of turning it into a greenhouse we used it for cycling. Seemed a bit more like common sense to me. As Britain has the best velodrome cyclists in the world, who train at Manchester, it seems to have paid off. Maybe the people of Montreal have now become world class gardeners.
Only the Old Town and the Latin Quarter save it from being a Toronto style waste of a city.
The Latin Quarter is a couple of student filled streets with more appealing buildings and restaurants and full on French everywhere. It's still a bit littered and grimy but at least it has more of an interesting youthfulness about it.
I expected far more than I got from Montreal. There are a couple of OK areas but on the whole it's a bit dull. The Mount Royal Park, designed by the same guy who designed New York's Central Park, fell short of all expectation and really was too far out of town to be considered a city park. Paying for parking once we got there was just adding to the annoyance of having to drive in the first place.
We were certainly glad to get out of our motel and back on the freeway. We had one city left to visit and after seeing this place we weren't getting our hopes up.