Montreal day 1…..

The gym in this hotel is the best yet! it has everything i like plus a real nice pool. I worked out for a good 45 minutes and really went for it this morning, trying to burn off al that amazing food id had at Maria and Jacks the night before!

Bob and i chilled out in the room till around 11:30ish, I then headed up to the Olympic stadium to do the thirty minute guided tour and take the Funicular lift to the top. I’d seen the stadium last time i was in Montreal but hadn't been on the tour or up the tower. I took the subway up to the stadium, took about twenty minutes and involved two tube trains. The subway here in Montreal doesn't run on metal wheels but runs on regular rubber tyres! this makes it ever so quiet, even when the trains arrive  at the platform its a lot quieter than say the New York or London subway, its all spotlessly clean as well!

The Olympic Stadium is where the infamous spitting incident occurred when Floyd played there on their Animals tour in 1977. I'm not gonna type the history of this as its well documented but this is one of the best explanations as to what exactly happened but suffice to say this whole thing was the catalyst for The Wall The Infamous spitting incident

I LOVE the building itself, its probably my most favourite building in the world! i know a lot of people think its ugly and a huge “white elephant” but i love wandering around this place, especially on the ground and seeing all the curves and shapes  of the buildings around, its like walking round a Michael Mann film location and I'm a huge fan of his!

Wandering around outside

     

The stadium building                                   

   

The tower is the largest inclined building in the world and has a large observation room at the top.

I took the thirty minute guided tour of the building and this included the stadium itself, the swimming pool areas plus some great info about the building. There were only 6 of us on the tour and we had a great guide who knew every imaginable detail about the building, a few facts below:

To hire the venue out is $110,000 and it holds 57,000 people seated.

When it was build it was $1.8Billion OVER budget!!

They replaced the roof after a huge storm back in 1998, it used to retract upwards into the hole in the front of the tower but is now a fixed fibreglass one.

It has seven swimming pools in one room and is one of the largest pool areas in North America.

   

The moment the guide opened the door to the actual stadium and i saw it i couldn't believe just how vast the space was, it was HUGE! as i posted  yesterday i took 12 pictures of the stadium and morphed these together to show just how big this place was. There's  a LOT more pictures of the building inside and out in the album below:

View Full Album

I wasn't inside the stadium long before i spotted something on one of the pillars next to me, could this have been the actual spit!!

I could have stayed in the actual stadium all day and just sat and looked at the curves and shapes on the building but i still had to go up the actual tower and see it all from above!

The fernicular lift going up the tower

It was an odd feeling going up in the air but going at a 40 degree angle! the ride up took about 4 minutes and the view on the way up was amazing.

On the way up

   

The view from the top was as you can imagine, spectacular. It was a real clear day and you could see for miles around, there were only 6 other people up there so i had al the viewing windows to myself!

The ride up to the top!

The ride up the tower

View of the stadium from above             Downtown Montreal                 The 1976 Olympic complex

   

Panorama view from the top of the tower

As i was videoing from the top of the tower looking down over the Olympic village i spotted a guy on the roof of one of the building, he was rollerblading and jumping between the building! then just laying on the roof and chilling out before doing it all again!

   

Guy jumping buildings on rollerblades!

I took the funicular back down the tower and again wandered round some more outside. The flags flying outside the stadium are still the same as they were at the actual games in 1976, this means even through some of the countries no longer exist their flags still fly! note there's no Canadian flag!!

 

I headed back to the hotel on the subway and got back to the hotel around 3:30pm