Ants, Encores, and the Biodome: 24 Hours in Montreal

Mid-week in April, my wife and I took a trip down to Montreal from Ottawa to go see Lewis Capaldi in concert. We decided to make a little vacation out of it, as it's not often that we get the chance to head down to Montreal.

We took the train from Ottawa to Montreal the morning of the concert and arrived in town just after 12:30. It was too early to check into our hotel, so we went out for lunch at an Irish pub, that was just a few streets over from our hotel. The lunch portions were huge and very fairly priced.

After lunch we were able to check into our hotel early, which was convenient. We dropped our bags and then walked down to the Old Port, just to wander. We ended up at the waterfront, which was pretty, and then took the subway back to our hotel to relax a bit before dinner.

We went out for a sit down pizza dinner with a friend who lives in town, so it was nice to catch up with them.

After dinner we headed down to the Bell Centre for the concert. We were seated up in the 200s but still had a great view of the stage. The opening act started right on time but overall wasn't that good. The audio mix wasn't right, so the instruments drowned out the vocals too much. I also found that the opener, Joy Crookes, didn't move around much and was just kind of going through the motions though it is the opener, so that was kind of expected.

The actual concert, once it began was great though! The vocals were amazing and the camera and background visuals were stunning. It was the best concert I had ever been to. One memorable part of the concert for me was right before the encore, when Lewis said that we all known how this works, I leave the stage, you all clap and then I come back so lets just cut this short and get on with it. Lewis played songs from his first two albums along with some of his newer songs as well. He ended the concert with one of his biggest hits Someone You Loved.

Lewis Capaldi in concert.

After the concert we headed back to our hotel, which was the Hotel Europa, BW Signature Collection. We were starting to get ready to head to bed when my wife noticed ants crawling on her toothbrush in the bathroom. We headed down to the front desk and were given a new room for the night. At this point we thought everything was good, but when I got into bed I noticed that the bottom sheet only covered half the mattress, and that there were no spare sheets in the room. This meant another trip back down to the front desk, who then sent someone up to our room with more sheets, which we had to use to make the bed sleepable. To say the least we were not that impressed. The next morning we talked to management and got a good discount on our stay, which was nice but the whole experience gave us a bit of a gross feeling.

After the whole hotel debacle, we went out for breakfast and then took the subway to the Biodome, which is in the Olympic Park in Montreal.

The Biodome was very interesting. It wasn't a full-blown zoo, but was made up of 5 different ecosystems, and housed the relevant animals from each one. Three of the ecosystems were native to Canada, and more particularly Quebec, which was quite interesting to see.

Once we were done in the Biodome, we walked around the Olympic Park a little and then took the subway back downtown. At this point we had a decent amount of time left before our train back to Ottawa, so we decided to take the REM up to the town of Mount-Royal to have lunch and a coffee in a park. It was a very pleasant time people watching.

Inside the Biodome, looking down on the St Lawrence ecosystem.

We took the REM back to the main train station and then got some food and settled in for our wait for the train, which wasn't that long, as we were soon on our Via Rail train back home, to wrap up a quick 24 hour vacation.

The photos down below are all the ones I took with my camera, while the one of the concert and inside the Biodome are taken on my Iphone 16.

Downtown Montreal.

Old Windsor Station.

Dodo statue we saw downtown.

Offices.

The old Grand Trunk head office.

Count yard in the Old Port.

Hotel Place D'Armes which we walked by.

The tower of the big O.

Olympic Rings outside the Biodome.

The subway station.

Thanks for reading about my wives and I's trip to Montreal to see Lewis Capaldi in concert. It was overall a good trip, and Montreal is a fun city to visit for a day.

These are essentially the only photos I took in the month of April so they will count as my April photo's post. I'm going to hold off posting monthly photo recaps for a little while as, I'll be busier now that the warmer weather is upon us. I have 4 camping trip posts that should be going up over the next few months so watch out for those, with a 8 day solo trip in Algonquin the next one to come out.

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