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| - Frederick Law Olmsted designed Central Park and Prospect Park.
He also designed Grand Army Plaza, Fort Tryon, Morningside Park, Eastern Parkway... (heck, he coined the word "parkway"!)
So it was interesting to see an aesthetic I'd considered so "New York" pop up on my recent visit to Montreal.
Montreal's namesake park is, like all the Olmsted creations I've had the pleasure of experiencing, a peaceful expanse that comes with the profound feeling that you're smack in the middle of a bustling city, but at the same time cleanly sealed off from it. The park is basically a giant hill filled with gorgeous trees. It's a lot more interesting than any ol' tourist park, because it's an adventure in itself! You have to climb up a zigzag of stairs and mazes of roads and foresty paths to explore it (yay goal-oriented behavior).
Hiking up to Mont Royal's entrance on Rue Peel sucks. It's like a 40 degree incline; don't know how the McGill kids stand it. But once you enter the park, that peaceful feeling settles in. The stairs are staggered so it doesn't feel too bad.
Reserve 2-3 hours of your day to visit Mont Royal. All the signs on paths inside are useless, so leave yourself some time to get lost.
If you're visiting during daytime, the autumn leaves are BEAUTIFUL. If you're visiting close to evening - bring flashlights! There are barely any lights the higher up you go, and absolute darkness follows soon after dusk. We saw several intrepid Montrealers wearing headlights.
Note that there isn't anything on the "summit" proper - you'll catch several lovely views of Montreal going up, but on the true summit there's nothing but a radio tower, plus a crown of trees obstructing any view outward.
For some reason, just below the summit, there's a gigantic lit-up Broadway-esque Christian cross, straight out of a sci-fi-horror film. It was terrifying.
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