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So it was time to move onto our pnultimate stop....Montréal. Before we left the beautiful Quebec City we headed out to breakfast followed but a last minute look around the winding streets of the old town. Its been a real pleasure being in Quebec and it has been completely different to any other place that we have been to in Canada.

We got into our taxi just before midday and headed down to the cities lower level and the train station for Quebec.

I know that we raved about how good the Canadian VIA rail is but honestly its just fantastic and I would recommend it to anyone travelling here. The seats, the wifi, the boarding process, everything about it is spot on.

As we had already gazed lovingly out of the window on this journey (ok, we were coming the other way but its still the same track) we were not anticipating having anything different to look out on so Jonathan turned on the ipad and watched a film whilst Trevor sorted out all of the photographs that we had taken in Quebec and labelled and filed them for future reference. One last point on the train before we move on, on Canada Rail they take your luggage from you before you get on the train and you either pick it up from the side of the platform (as we did in Quebec) or the luggage gate routed to one of those airport carousels (as it did here in Montreal). Now that was a totally new experience for train travel.

The journey went without event which is more han can be said for our arrival in Montreal.

We were staying at a Delta hotel again on Ave President Kennedy and despite telling the taxi driver this he managed to take us to the other Delta hotel at the other end of town...we were not impressed and did not find out until we tried to check in. So it was another taxi back across town to our hotel....second time lucky.

We checked in and headed straight back out again to the local Starbucks for a coffee and a chance to swat up a little more on Montreal before hitting the streets a little to get some bearings of where we were.

Now we have actually been to Montreal before about eight years ago in the winter after a little trip to New York. To be honest all that we can really remember about that time was the biting cold and spending a lot of the time underground on the huge malls that they have here to protect the inhabitants from the cold in winter.

We walked the main high street looking for hints and memories of where we had been before and it did not take long to find them.

Now we must be in Festival season here as it was The Festival of Quebec when we where there and now here in Montreal it is the Jazz festival and boy this is a BIG festival. The city seems to have shut off an area the size of about five blocks by four blocks and various stages are dotted around within that area that seemed to come alive and various different times. I have to say though that the music that we stopped to listen to was certainly nothing close to Jazz, more like rock 'n' roll to our ears.

We had not had a proper lunch today having been on the train so were hungry and having not had a Chinese for a while we headed out to Chinatown twisting our way through all the barriers that had been put up for the Jazz festival. We found a great place that had a greater chinese to western eating ratio (always a good sign) but the portions were huge and it was a real struggle.

After that huge dinner we needed to walk some of it off so we headed down into the village just to take in what was going on. The streets were really busy and the overspill from the Jazz festival seemed to be reaching nearly two miles back form all the main stages. We decided that we would eat down in the village tomorrow night so it was well worth the walk.

On the way back to the hotel the heavens opened with what was first a little drizzle but by the time we reached the base of the Jazz festival we were really getting wet and regretted not getting an umbrella or some lightweight coats.

Back at the hotel Jonathan went off to the gym,m only for thirty minites but he needed to do something to start combatting all this food we have been eating! (that one was for you dad!).Tomorrow is our big day in Montreal so had better get to bed, its been a long day.

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