Day 6.090: Montréal Science Centre

Here are some pictures from our visit to the Montréal Science Centre last Friday - most of the time I was too busy having fun to take photos!  Once again, we benefited from it being a normal work day for the locals. There were some school groups there, but generally things were quiet enough that we could move at our own pace.  In reality, we could probably have spent a couple more hours there before we would have run out of exciting things to do.

Pictures anti-clockwise from top left:

• E5N1 put on a show for Exile #2;
• meanwhile, the girls were playing an excellent video game trying to solve the world's economic, political and environmental problems
• avoid the dragon's gaze if you can (it has a concave head but even when you know, it's still eerie); 
• turning E5N1's dance moves into a James Bond credits sequence
• my 'drawing' of Exile #3 was actually one of the better attempts to make a photofit picture of ourselves and each other - amazing how you can think you've got all the parts close, and it still looks nothing like the person you're basing it on)
• how many E5N1's is too many...?

Day 6.089: L'eau - an answer!

After the mystery sign of Day 6.085, I was excited to see another similar one the next day - this time with some explanatory text.

Finally we would know - is it about bicycles (Exile #3's guess), the scales of justice (mine), movable picnic tables (Dad), clackers (A)?

I moved closer to see what it said...

Hmmm - perhaps it would remain a mystery - albeit one now possibly related to swimming pools.

Except, wait - what's that below the sign...?

Ah - the same pipework as before - as noticed by Tall Guy - and could those "balls" actually be water outlets positioned at the same jaunty angle as the real ones?  I believe we have a winner - Montreal's unique fire hydrant signage!

Day 6.088: Six years ago today...

...we had our second major life-event of 2007.

That day, and the last five anniversaries of it, looked something like this (clockwise from top-left):

Today looked something like this:

Happy Birthday E5N1!

Day 6.087: Biodôme né Vélodrome

Our trip to Montreal started with a three and a half hour drive, including an uneventful border crossing, despite the need for five passports and four green cards.

When we arrived we made our way straight to the Biodome next to the olympic stadium. The Biodome itself was built as the velodrome for the 1976 summer games but is now a rather excellent zoo.

After a quick lunch at the cafeteria there, we bought our tickets and went inside. This is some of what we saw:

It's not easy to say why, but it was hugely successful visit for us. The animals were plentiful, but seemed happy (something that is borne out by the successful breeding programmes). It probably helped that we were there on a normal school and work day in Montreal - we went back there for lunch on Saturday and the ticket lines (non-existent on Thursday) were huge. The habitats are very engaging and varied and we happily spent the three and a half hours from finishing lunch to closing time exploring them and the Discovery Room.

Day 6.086: Butter flies like a banana

We're home. We had an uneventful drive back from Montreal through the late afternoon and evening. But first, we had some more visiting to do.

Today's destination was the Botanical Gardens. They are hardly at their best right now, but the highlight is a series of greenhouses that were in excellent condition including one which currently houses a huge collection of live and uncaged butterflies. We were lucky to coincide with this - and it was definitely worth the wait to get in.

Here are some pictures - some butterflies, but also E5N1 experiencing the life cycle of a monarch butterfly - egg, caterpillar and chrysalis - and my hand alongside a moth, perhaps it's just as well that these giants were not flying around, but quietly sleeping!

Talking of monarchs, yesterday, at the Science Center we watched an IMAX movie - they have a real giant-screen IMAX setup like the ones that I first encountered in the 80's, not the pale imitation that movie theaters use.  The 3D film is called L'Incroyable voyage des papillons or in the English-language version we saw (the only English-language showing of any film during the middle of the day) rather more prosaically: Flight of the Butterflies.  Of course, living here, we knew all about the monarchs and their long migration flights - or so we thought.

It turns out there was masses we did not know.  The film tells the parallel stories of a butterfly, her daughter and her granddaughter in the three-generation, year-long migration and of the man who made his life-work to  understand the migration, discovering - in the early 1970's that they congregate in the winter in huge colonies - huddling together on wooded mountain tops in Mexico where they look like this (an exhibit from the Insectarium at the Botanical Gardens today):

Amazing stuff!

Oh, yes and apologies for the kerning error above, here's the evidence: