We had spent the night at Camping Madeleine. We've included a few pictures of the campground. When we thought that the morning commute would be "over", we ventured out onto the freeway heading for downtown Montreal. We drove over Pont Victoria, an old drawbridge that passed over some locks that are used for ships moving up the St. Lawrence River towards Lake Ontario. Arriving in the old downtown area, there was road and building construction on about every block. We had to deal with closed street, detours, closed sidewalks and streets reduced to one lane. I can't imagine trying to pull our 5th wheel trailer into the heart of the city!

The first order of business was to find a parking place. After driving around old Montreal (cobblestone streets and all!), we saw a sign that said there were 200+ open spots at a downtown Metro station-convention center-information center. So, I drove straight for this parking lot, which was underground. I drove up to the opening and the warning bar for over height vehicles came to the top of my windshield. No way was the RAM2500 going to fit! So as, I backed out, Arlene prayed aloud that we would get a parking spot. I started to go around the block (all one-way streets, of course), got stuck behind a FedEx truck who stopped for a delivery. Finally, I made it back to the main street in front of the convention center. A man walked up to our truck and asked if we spoke French and were looking for a parking spot! This parking attendant had seen us on a monitor attempting to get into the parking garage and ran around the block to get us. He told us there was a door he could raise for over-sized trucks. He directed us back to the large door right before the auto entrance. The door opened and inside were parking spaces for large trucks and buses. We gladly paid the daily rate of CAD$22.00 and off we went to explore Montreal. God had come through for us!

By that time, it was noon. The next block was Chinatown. The #1 restaurant on Yelp! was the Noodle Factory. It was a little hole in the wall, but packed with locals and tourists. We waited a few minutes for a table. Our waiter was volunteering to help a relative with the restaurant. He had been in San Francisco and other cities with large Chinese populations. His English was perfect! He was a jokester and a lot of fun. We really enjoyed the food too!

After eating, we headed toward Basilique Notre-Dame. I sat outside on the steps while Sharon and Arlene went inside. It was fun just to sit on the steps and "people watch". There was a musical street performer across the way in the plaza, singing and playing the guitar. When the girls returned, we wandered down the streets looking at the architecture and the cobblestone streets. Most of the buildings in Old Montreal date back to the late 1700's/early 1800's. We finally arrived at the old Montreal harbor (I just can't stay away, huh?). There wasn't much activity or much to see, except that they are building a new cruise terminal right in the heart of the harbor.

The girls wanted to walk up to another open market - Marche Bonsecours. I told them when they were done looking around, give me a call and I would come by and pick them up. I was a little concerned about Roxie who had been in the car for four hours by now. We had left food and water and the windows cracked for ventilation. At least, she wasn't in the sun.

The Marche Bonsecours was more like a modern mall, full of small boutiques. So the girls didn't stay long. I picked them up at Place Jacques-Cartier.

From there, we headed to Costco to stock up our trailer. It was very different to see everything in French with very few English sub-titles. However, everything looked the same ~ the only difference is that Costco Canada doesn't accept VISA, which Costco USA had switched to. So, we had to either get cash or use our bank's debit card.

By now it was dark, so we headed back to our campground which was about 15 miles away. Again, it was a late dinner, clean-up and ready for bed.