The Underground City RESO

You may see this logo at street level in downtown Montréal. It is an indicator of an entrance to Montréal's "underground city." I hadn't heard of this apparent tourist attraction and useful walking, shopping and eating destination for native Montréalers.

On the recommendation of a couple of friends we were trying to get to Jean Talon Market via the Metro subway system. According to Google Maps, you could take "RESO Montréal Souterrain" underground tunnel to Station Bonaventure. Then take the M2 Orange train to Jean Talon Station (Montmorency direction). We found the entrance right beside our hotel and took the escalator down below and voila a number of shops and walkways. We followed the signs to Station Bonaventure. There was the CN train station, hallways and many stores. Lana describes it as "a long, strung out mall." For the inclement weather conditions this is the perfect place. You are out of the cold and rain.

Made it to the subway station and two return subway tickets each totalled $11 so a pretty reasonable deal. The subway is fairly clean and you always know where the doors will open as it is marked on the platform. The train moves very fast. Very unusual configuration of seats within the trains as there is a lot of wasted seating space in the cars.

We did make it to Jean Talon Market which is much larger than Atwater Market. For the first time, we encountered rain in Montréal. About a 300 metre walk from the subway station to Jean Talon Marché. We needed to use Lana's cellphone GPS to find the direction to Jean Talon. Once there, we were pretty hungry. Much less English here as we are not near downtown Montréal. This market seems to specialize in fruits and vegetables--tonnes of apples (we picked up Lana's favourite Honeycrisp to snack on, plus Lana says we're not eating enough fruit on this trip!). One of the stalls has samples of "Belle tomatoes" which look like a special variety for Quebec--Lana says they are delicious. For lunch, we find a meat shop that is selling some cooked sausages so one sausage in a bun each. At another place we had a soup, small baguette and a chausson aux pomme (apple turnover). Just an aside that taxes in the restaurants are around 15% in Montréal.

We decided to use our spa passes Monday afternoon and needed to buy a cheap swimsuit each. Lana had a great idea to get to Winners which is pretty close to the hotel. It was raining pretty good so when we walked back we used the underground city. It took more time than walking above ground, but we were dry and warm.