Rainy Day Traveler - HomeAt home or on the road, it can be hard spending the day indoors when the weather is smiling. A good lashing downpour is the perfect excuse to investigate all the great museums, architectural landmarks and lesser-known but equally entrancing indoor haunts of the world. You can shop the local mall or indoor flea market, take the kids to an indoor skate park or treat yourself to a decadent, mind-freeing spa day. Discovering a comfy café to enjoy a steamy double decaf soy latte and an afternoon of journaling or exploring a gripping guidebook can create a memorable travel experience in and of itself. So bring along your collapsible umbrella and let's see what fun we can have in the rain...
Montreal is a great place to escape from the weather any time of year. They have so much of it – snow, rain and sweltering summer heat – that they’ve come up with some ingenious ways to stay climatically comfortable all year long.
international design and architecture with its new International Quarter that links Old Montreal with the Downtown Business District. They joined the two by suspending a new office complex right over the freeway and adding branches to the RESO (from the French réseau), the largest network of interior passages in the world. Although much of it is above ground, locals refer to it as the Underground City. For more rainy day Montreal alternatives, check out the Montreal Rainy Day Links page.
The Biodôme is a unique concept that combines properties of a natural history museum, zoo and aquarium. Created inside the velodrome from the 1976 Summer Olympics, this “House of Life” recreates four different ecosystems of the Americas, each with appropriate climate and inhabited by thriving flora and fauna.
Many cities around the world have created connecting passageways to allow people to walk between buildings protected from the weather. These range from a few shopping galleries extended from a subway station to miles of underground tunnels or above ground skywalks. Montreal has the distinction of having the longest system of interior passages in the world. Officially christened the RESO, a transliteration of the French réseau, meaning network, the 20 miles (32 km) of underground tunnels and ground-level interior walkways connect hotels, apartment buildings, offices, shopping malls, movie theaters, supermarkets, restaurants, museums and local, regional and national train stations.
Some people think that by definition a museum should have grand paintings or ancient statues and take all day to visit. Museums of everyday history like historic homes and local history museums are more likely to present more mundane items of common use over a period of time in a particular place. Archaeological museums may have grand discoveries like artifacts from ancient Egypt or Angkor Wat. In fact, many people go into archaeology with a romantic notion of going off and discovering mythical civilizations a la Indiana Jones. In reality a lot of the field work is digging around in the refuse of a bygone era. However, in looking at what people chose to discard or build over, even close to home, sometimes researchers do uncover a lost city.
