Tuesday dawned bright and sunny in Montreal and sister Mary, brother-in-law John, and I were ready to make the most of it.  We started with a hearty Montreal brunch at the B & M Restaurant where I had half a bagel with lox and a slice of French toast with real Canadian maple syrup for dessert. Mary opted for the other half of the bagel, and John had an omelet. Then we discussed our plan for the day.

We decided to visit the Biosphere which we had viewed from our Ferris wheel ride the day before.

With both Mary and I using our GPS on our phone, we managed to steer John to the Biosphere, which is on an island in the St. Lawrence River. But once we got there, I was scratching my head. I thought that the Biosphere was by the Botanical Gardens! Egad! I had made a fateful error. We didn’t want the Biosphere—we wanted the Biodome!

Back in the car, we set our GPSs anew and headed for the Olympic site which now features the Biodome and is near to the Botanical Gardens.

We grabbed the first parking we saw under the Olympic Stadium, which cost $1.6 billion to build in 1976 and is now used to host concerts, home shows, and the like. It hasn’t had a regular tenant since 2004, when the Expos departed. Its parking garage is humungous, so it was easy to find a space. Then we began our trek. We had to walk about half a mile to get to the Biodome, which incidentally looks nothing like the Biosphere. The “bio” thing really threw me off.

We wandered through the Biodome, which showcases a variety of environments found around the world, complete with animals both real and digital. The penguins are always fun to watch in their frosty world, and we then sweated through the rainforest with its parrots, bats, and scary frogs. Then it was off to a Laurentian Forest complete with fish. Who knew?

After our trip through the environments, we were anxious to get to the gardens, which on the map looked misleadingly close by. If we didn’t have our phones with their navigation systems, I wonder if we would ever have made it! The Jardins Botanique de Montreal were a full 1.5 miles away. And it was a circuitous route, involving clambering over old Olympic sites with no signage. Egad!

Once we finally reached our destination, we enjoyed our ramble through the huge rose plantings, as well as the impressive Chinese and Japanese gardens. This amazing venue covers 185 acres, so needless to say we only scratched the surface of this attraction.

But the sun was getting low in the sky, and we still had to hike back to the Olympic Stadium and find our car. Again, the lack of signage was a challenge, but some friendly skateboarders gave us directions. By the time we got back to the car, Mary said that we had walked 14,736 steps, which is equal to 6.98 miles. I think I may have crawled for that last Olympic mile, but I crossed the finish line.