OK, D-Day mark two for Philippa who was out the door at 0630 to catch the 45 express into Montreal and have her second visa appointment. Tom and I snored. When we eventually rolled out of our beds and had porridge, and consulted about what to do it was already mid-morning. So we decided to pursue a cultural option and headed for La Ronde, Montreal’s historic amusement park. Tom was completely determined to go on the terrifying rollercoasters you can see from the road. He is a bit of a fiend for rollercoasters, dragging P and me onto a loop-the-loop coaster in Florida when he was five (“lets do it again”) and then persuading the ticket guy that he was tall enough to go on a frankly terrifying ride of death in Minnesota last year. I had to go with him and I had visibly aged by the time we came down. Thankf, I mean unfortunately, he wasn’t tall enough for the most extreme rides at La Ronde which is a real shame as I was really looking forward to them… But we found plenty of others – until the rain came and they closed everything down for a bit.

But an unfeasably large ice-cream soon turned things around

It was a lot of fun having this great little guy to myself and we did his favourite rides over and over again. Philippa meanwhile stayed in Montreal hoping they might get her visa finished the same day (they didn’t) and otherwise having a generally girly day with a haircut and a bit of light shopping, while T and I ate bad food and rode on log flumes. We eventually bolted back to Brossard and T and I changed into our nicer clothes to meet Philippa in the Big City for dinner. We’d decided that as we were forced to have more time in Montreal we might as well make the most of it.