HOME OF THE MOLE
The underground is really cool until you get lost. We honestly just wanted to make it to the Old City. In fact, the Notre Dame Basilica was our main objective. We honestly had no clue. It felt like we were going in circles. The distance above ground was 0.7 miles but after a few hours of exploring my map told me were 0.9 miles away. How could we actually be farther away? I'm back to being confused again.
The underground is a really hot concept considering how utterly cold it is outside. This is how the weather use to be in Chicago like 20 years ago. Our winters have been so mild and Montreal has just reminded me by how much. So even though we spent most of our time lost it was better then having our face frozen off.
There are a ton of stores down here and restaurants. You could probably live down here forever without ever leaving. You'll also find many metro stations. We didn't get on a train but we could see them. They were really packed on a Friday afternoon. We didn't want to tackle a train when we couldn't even tackle this place.
We were finally tired of literally not knowing where we were going and we decided to emerge from the underground. I turned on the GPS to take us towards a fantastic bowl of french onion soup near the old city and then on to the basilica. We did that all above ground...in the freezing cold weather of Montreal. Oh to be back down under with the moles.
As we were heading back to our hotel the winter was simply freezing our faces and my wife was starting to look at taxis. I saw a sign for the metro and said let's go in here to warm up. It was a really cool pit stop. It was a 20 story glass atrium that was built between several buildings. There was a beautiful reflection pool with a statute and a photo shoot of a man in mask wearing an Elizabethan dress. The photographer yelled at me saying, "No photos!" Too late dude because I already got a selfie when you weren't looking. Probably the coolest thing we found was a giant section of the Berlin Wall. All I could think was this...we just can't give up on the underground.
There was a lady sitting at an info desk. We told her where we were trying to go. She handed us a map and pointed us in the right direction. A map? There's an actual plan on how to get around down here. We followed the map and used it with the posted signs. It basically showed us which way to go. We did ask a few people along the way for pointers on direction but we did it. We were able to conquer the underground and successfully navigate back to our hotel. Success!
My only words of advice are that you're going to give up and get frustrated but it's how you use that feeling to motivate you on how you continue on this journey. Just ask a local because they know how to get around and stay out of the cold. I gotta say the underground is cool but not as cool as the temperature it's outside. Stay warm and trust in the underground.