Biodome

We spent our third full day in Montreal at the Biodome de Montreal.

First, a note about Montreal. There appears to be a lot of focus among the fashonistas and urban professionals.

For example, the garage we park our car at in the condo complex has many trophy cars like this Mercedes.

Each morning has found me searching out caffeine and breakfast sandwiches. The most reliable source has been Tim Hortons, which appears to be a Canadian Dunkin’ Donuts.

To try to make the caffeine trek worthwhile I take a different route each time.

This morning I passed West Elm and was able to grab a pic of this ad of this English man that are all over that Linda may like to be aware of in case she gets over her fear of Winter and wants to move north sometime.

On another walk, I passed these steps again.

The [biodome] (https://espacepourlavie.ca/en/biodome) is part of a complex hosted in the old 1976 Summer Olympic buildings in the Olympic District.

We drove the the Olympic District and parked in the stadium garage and had to find our way to the sites.

The buildings include the World’s largest angled structure which is a tower at 45 degrees that supports a dome.

Camilla showed off some Ballet moves walking through the biodome.

Most of the time I’m forbidden from taking pictures of Linda or Camilla.

For some reason Camilla decided to take a selfie with me.

And take a picture of herself.

And me.

The biodome itself had four climate/habitat zones with various animals, but, it was really a small zoo.

One interesting creature was this frog.

The gift shops often have many childrens books, but, I can’t read French so I’m not sure what they are about. I’m guessing I can guess what this one is about.

Camilla got a Cat hair clip.

After the biodome we walked towards the gardens.

Along the way, we found a skate park. It wasn’t very busy. A family explained that it is typically packed, but, since it is St. John Baptiste day, many people have alternate plans. Apparently that is like Quebec’s independence day (each province may have their own holiday like that).

It happened that the father that was skating had the same board Mark Gonzales board I have from the 80s.

At the gardens we saw many plants and wished we had skipped the biodome to have more time to walk in the parks.

Roses of every color were in full bloom – much healthier than we’ve seen at Leu Gardens.

We found the Chinese gardens.

Later we finally found the Japanese gardens.

Camilla got tired of walking, but allowed us to take a quick walk through the Japanese Gardens.

The entrance to the Japanese gardens had very tall trees covered with white flowers (at least twice as tall as shown in this picture).

In addition to the biodome, gardens, and skate park, the Olympic District includes an Insectarium and planetarium. Driving to the district allowed us to see some less urban and less affluent neighborhoods of Montreal. It was nice to see some of the olympic buildings had found a second life.

1976 Montreal Summer Olympics

• Also known as: Games of the XXI Olympiad and (French: Jeux de la XXIe Olympiade)
• Canada did not win any gold medals.
• It was the first (and only) olympics hosted by Canada.
• 29 countries boycotted the games because Canada didn’t ban New Zealand after New Zealand rugby team didn’t honor a United Nations sprting embargo and had toured South Africa.
• Security was visible due to recent Munich Massacre.
• Bruce Jenner won the decathalon with a Wolrld Record number of points (and likely was on Wheaties box).
• Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto performed on a broken right knee performing a perfect triple dismount from rings to enable the Japanese team to win gold.
• East Germany surpassed all expectations for a middle-sized nation by finishing with the second most gold medals in total.
  • Their achievements were undermined by the revelation of a doping scandal.
  • It was later revealed that after injecting athletes with performance-boosting drugs at the Montreal Olympics, East German officials dumped the leftover serum and syringes in the Saint Lawrence River.
• The Soviet Union won the most gold and overall medals.
• The 1976 Winter Games were held in Innsbruck Austria.

ref: 1976 Summer Olympics

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