Olympic Stadium, Museum of Contemporary Art

Woke up late at 10am. Walked to the Peel metro station and took the train to the Olympic Stadium.This is the site of the Olympic in 1976. The main feature is the leaning Montreal tower. The entire stadium/tower looked a little run down, but futuristic even after all these years.

My first stop is the Biodome, which is essentially an indoor zoo. Being indoors, the size is quite smaller compare to some of the other zoo. The highlight is the penguin display. With "Happy Feet" and "March of the Penguins", it is hard not to enjoy that exhibit.

From the Biodome, I took a 10 mins walk to the Insectarium. After finding out there is no insect tasting this year, I decided not to visit the exhibit. Instead, I decided to tour the Jardin Bontanical Garden. However, given it is winter, there was not much to see. I return to take the cable car up to Montreal tower. The day was fairly clear, so the view is quite good.

I left the Olympic stadium area and went to L'express for lunch. Highly recommended old style french bistro.

I ordered a blood sausage lunch special with piped mash potatoes and apple gravy. The mash potatoes and gravy is simple and delicious, but the sausage taste too"gamey" for me. There is another dish which I want to try--bone marrow with coarse salt. Oh well...another trip.

From L'express, it was a quick metro ride to the Museum of Contemporary Art. This museum is quite small, but I did enjoy the collection. Most of the artist are from Quebec, so I am not familiar with the artists, but the photos and paintings are interesting.

The museum closed at 5pm and I walked along Rue St Catherine a little more, this time on the French side of town. This stretch of Rue St Catherine is a little more run down.

Dinner was at Schwartz's deli, a Montreal institution. The place looks like a page out of the 60's. The wait staff wore white t-shirt and apron. The specialty is the smoke meat sandwich with mustard, washed down with cherry soda. The meat is rubbed with pepper and smoked, then slice thinly and piled high between bread.The meat is quite tender, though not melt in your mouth soft and still has some texture. For smoked food,it was not too salty. I have a side order of cole slaw and it was just pickled cabbage and carrot without mayo. I think the cole slaw is quite special (I have not seen too many cole slaw without mayo). The smoke meat sandwich was good, but I in my opinion, not enough to make this place an institution.

I went to Up-stairs, a fairly famous jazz pub to round out the night. Frankly, the band is not very good and I was quite disappointed.