Thanks for all your kind words regarding the stolen bikes.  It was just so bizarre.  I was so incredibly happy and having such a wonderful time in the gardens and then we came out to the disbelief of the missing bikes.  Talk about crashing down to earth.  The bikes were not expensive, but my bike and I did a lot of things together.  I lost weight, did a triathlon, duathlon, rode 100 miles.   Not to mention that I have that 62 mile charity ride coming up in just about a month – so I have to replace the bike quickly.  This was not an expense we really can afford right now as we just dropped $6600 on new windows for the house that are coming soon.  We were thinking of upgrading the bikes next year, but guess it has to happen sooner, and not to the degree that we would have upgraded.  I don’t want to wish ill on anyone, but I hope the person that stole these gets herpes or something.

Anyway, the botanical garden itself was absolutely stunning.  Funny how I offered to treat John to the gardens, and we found out it was the one weekend a year where it was free.  I got off lucky on that! Other than losing my bike, of course….

Enjoy the Montreal version of my what’s blooming post:

Stevia plant:

Quinoa – interesting, don’t you think?

And flax.  Look at all these good healthy foods!

Echinacea milkshake – pretty cool:

Biggest hibiscus ever:

Stunning dahlias:

Flowering tobacco – Nicotiana sylvestris, which I hope to grow next year:

I took 150 pictures in the botanical gardens!  I might pull some more to show.  I was just in complete joy here.  I had asked John if it was possible to explode from happiness and his answer was “no” or I already would have. 😀

After we came out and saw the bikes gone, we kind of sat for a while and I had a little cry while we figured out our options.  We ended up using the Bixie rentals to work our way back to the B&B.  We were actually famished at this point, and stopped along the way to try a bagel:

I had a multigrain bagel:

Very different than a NY style bagel as it was more like baguette type bread rather than a chewy bagel like I am used to.  But it was tasty.

We then changed out of bike clothes and just walked around.  We did try to at least enjoy ourselves some, but we both just felt so deflated and I was ready to go home.  However, we had paid for 2 nights, so we decided against that.  Found a good place to eat dinner that wasn’t super crowded.  Indian, of course.  You can always count on finding a seat at an Indian restaurant.  I am looking pretty pathetic here:

I was happier when food came out.  Chana Masala

Must recreate at home.  Plus some of the fluffiest nan bread ever:

The food was really good, but the service was terrible.  John ordered a diet coke twice and never got it, and they never checked back on us.

Gelato makes it all better, though.

We are actually going to start looking at some bikes n Sunday when we get back to the US  (can’t wait for that).  Gotta cram in bike research quickly!