Saturday, January 10, 2009

The Overground Underground (or "I can't feel my toes")

There was another Gaza demonstration today - around 10 000 of us showed up, and it was a good mix of people too (not just Arabs or Muslims. Seems to be that as the crisis goes on for an extended period of time, more and more people are becoming aware of just how bad it is...)
We marched from Dorchester Square at Peel and Renee Levesque all the way to the Complexe Desjardins at Renee Levesque and St-Urbain (1.1 km away).
After the Demonstration, we were too cold to walk home outside, so M introduced me to a new area of the Montreal underground. Now, having lived in the city for about 10 months (and living downtown!) I've walked the underground in the core downtown area a fair amount, but this was a whole other area I didn't even realize was connected. We walked for about 40 minutes without stepping outside at all and exited 3 (3!) minutes from our place for the last bit. Not only could I actually feel my feet by this point; they were actually warm. And I should clarify that the underground is actually a stretch of tunnels and overpasses, so the term underground is not 100% accurate. Sometimes, you're inside and at street level. Sometimes you're a floor up...
But here's the coolest part: on our walk, we came across two separate wedding parties using random parts of the underground as background for their wedding photos. Now, some areas are just regular brick wall, or completely ordinary, but some are actually extremely artistic. The first bride and groom were taking photos against a yellow background. The second were in Windsor Station, taking their photos at a pretty elaborate staircase. I took no pictures of either couple (though I did congratulate them as we passed), but here are a few grainy cell phone shots of a neat tunnel area on our route....


2 comments:

VioletSky said...

Those underground streets are a neat idea, but I always get so lost in the one in Toronto.

And it took him 10 months to show you??

noha said...

The ones in montreal actually have really really good signage. not saying it's impossible to get lost or anything, but they're extremely organized...
and in all fairness to M, I should clarify that he's shown me a lot of the underground, just not this particular route before because it's really not along our regular path...