Day 1 (Thursday)
Our trip started with a bang. Valerie doesn’t have the years
of business travel experience that I do and so gets nervous about traveling. So
of course, when we tried to get to the airport we couldn’t get an Uber within a
reasonable time. Then the taxi took longer to arrive than promised. Then we hit
traffic on the way to the airport. Then we went to the wrong terminal. we had
booked via United but it was an Air Canada codeshare and only when we showed up
at the United counter did we learn that we needed to go to Air Canada to check
in. Air Canada is one of the few airlines operating out of the old terminal at
National and so we had to walk a Get Smart maze of walkways and tunnels to get
there.
We also then scolded by a frazzled ticket counter agent after we accidentally inserted ourselves into the middle of a large group that was
checking in (while she as an Air Canada employee, it was clear from her
demeanor that she was American). Fortunately, everything ended well. We had
planned in lots and lots of time and despite all these complications we still
got to the gate with time to spare, but it was a nerve-wracking start to the
trip. Once in Canada, things went more smoothly. Well, we did have a ten minute
wait to “deplane” due to a mechanical problem with the jetway; however, our bus
ride from the airport (on the appropriately numbered 747 bus) went smoothly and
we had no trouble finding our B&B.
The place had been recommended by a friend who has
stayed there ten years running for her annual trip to see the Montreal Formula
One Grand Prix. The place is a charming example of shabby chic in the best way
and the proprietor is a charming Frenchman named Philippe. Philippe had lots of
instructions for us. The special technique for using the doorknob on the front
door at night to make it close more quietly. How far open to leave the bathroom
door (bathroom is in the hall) when we’re not using it. How to lock the
bathroom door. The proper orientation of the dish drainer should we choose to
use the kitchen. And of course, no shoes inside. You get the idea.
That first evening we went for a walk in the nearby Gay
Village. Having not read up on it I didn’t know if the name referred to the
contemporary meaning of “gay” or if it had some other significance – perhaps
the area was settled by Francois le Gay, or something. It was the former – it’s
the city’s out-and-proud gay district. The main drag (so to speak) is a
pedestrian mall with rainbow-colored flags and beads hung over the street. We walked
its length – lots of restaurants and bars, and only the occasional seedier
establishment – head shops and strip clubs. We visited a well known chocolate
shop that along with more conventional offerings sold milk chocolate penises –
complete with a trail of white chocolate cum. There was
a cool musical stationary bike installation which I rode – there were four
stationary bikes side by side, each of which controlled a different element of
a multi-track recording – rhythm, bass, instruments and vocals. So, depending
on which bikes were being pedaled you’d hear different elements of a song.
Cool. In general, visiting this kind of area, whether it’s Montreal’s Gay
Village, the French Quarter of New Orleans, several areas of New York, etc.,
etc., reminds me of how buttoned down D.C. is for a big city. Nowhere in D.C.
can you find people letting their freak flag fly in the way you can in other
cities. Even smaller, seemingly more conservative cities. We are a city of
boring bureaucrats L
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| Riding the musical bike installation |
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| The Gay Village |
Also on a musical note, Montreal apparently has a thing with
street pianos. In the states I’ve occasionally seen a piano set out on the
street for people to play (e.g., at Merrifield) but they’re always the most
terrible, broken down things you could imagine. In Montreal there are
volunteers who look after the pianos; they’re surprisingly decent instruments.
We sat for a while and listened to a young guy play a Chopin piano concerto (I
had no idea that it was Chopin but musical sophisticate Valerie recognized it
as such right away). We spoke with him later on – turns out he recently
graduated from college with a degree in classical performance and was in town
looking for an apartment as he was about to start a graduate program in music
at McGill University. He was really good. It was therefore with some
trepidation that I sat down and banged out my relatively coarse versions of
some jazz and New Orleans blues songs; however, they were well received. I
initially started to get up after one song, but Alain, the piano’s volunteer
keeper (who, incidentally, bore a slight resemblance to Jabba the Hutt – but
was much friendlier, as you might expect from a Canadian), encouraged me to
play more and so I did. After two encores I made my excuses and we continued on
– Alain urged us to come back later in the evening some time, when apparently
some regulars (New Yorkers, at that!) had been showing up. Valerie and I
continued on to dinner at Haru Hana, a true hole in the wall Asian place. Their
cuisine spanned Japanese, Korean, and a little bit of Thai. Usually that’s a
bad sign, but the food at this place was really good – and dirt cheap. I was
pretty hungry, too, as we hadn’t eaten lunch. Valerie had had the good sense to
fortify herself at the airport with some delicacies from Dunkin Donuts, but I
had limited myself to a mixed carrot/cucumber/apple/turmeric juice and a Kind
bar.
Day 2 (Friday)
On our first morning in Montreal we awoke all achy. Old
people, first night in an unfamiliar, rather hard bed. My left shoulder (the
current good one!) ached – from sleeping on it wrong or from dragging the
suitcases, I don’t know.
As usual, I awakened early. I had noticed that Montreal had
bikeshare bikes (called “Bixi”) and that there was a station up the street from
our B&B. I went out and took an early morning Bixi ride around our area.
The Bixi bikes are pretty similar to the DC bikeshare bikes, except that for
whatever reason the one I rode had the gearshift blocked out so it was
effectively a single speed bike. Montreal is a hilly city. It’s not easy to
haul one of those heavy tanks uphill and I have to admit to walking one brief
section. Overall, though, it was a fun experience – and during my ride I stumbled
upon the location of the Montreal Circus Festival on Saint Denis street, right
nearby.
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| Bixi Bikes |
Upon my return Valerie and I had breakfast together –
yogurt, fruit and croissants. Phillipe’s is a one-man operation, and he has a
repertoire of two breakfasts: the yogurt and croissant one and the crepe one.
We had three yogurt/croissant days and one crepe day. As someone who eats
yogurt w/ fruit and granola just about every day at home, I had no problem with
the seeming monotony of Philippe’s breakfasts.
There was another guest at the table, Marc, a French
professor of Physics, in town for some scientific meetings. His research focus
is the physics behind biological rhythms, I provide computer infrastructure to
computational biologists studying cancer, Valerie is a math teacher and former
computer systems analyst, and Philippe, it turns out, worked for HP doing
something IT-related for many years (he said he still messes with computers as
a hobby – fixes friends’ computers, etc.). So, to the extent possible given the
language barrier, we spent a little while exchanging techie gang signs.
The forecast was iffy about rain, but it promised to be the
coolest day of our stay and so we decided to risk the rain and head to the
Botanical Gardens. Having misread the map we initially set out on foot,
thinking it was much closer than it was (it’s actually about a 5 KM walk, which
is far from undoable, but it’s still a long walk). After a helpful local helped
us realize our mistake we hopped on one bus, then another, to take us there. A
“Top Ten Signs You’re from New York” list I once came across online included,
“You consider eye contact from a stranger to be a hostile act.” Yes, New
Yorkers and Washingtonians alike actively ignore everyone around them on public
transportation. Not so in Montreal! A gregarious senior citizen – complete with
the big wrap-around sunglasses, as well as a baseball cap perched at a jaunty
angle on his head - waiting at the bus stop with us struck up a conversation.
Once on the bus he initiated a conversation with some other passengers, all of
whom eagerly joined in (as opposed to New Yorker knee-jerk reaction of giving a
death glare to anyone who dared to invade your personal space on public
transportation). Likewise, the friendly bus drivers (really!)
helped us find our way.
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| Valerie at the Gardens |
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| Art Installation |
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| Water feature |
The gardens were quite beautiful. We visited the Japanese
Garden, which took us back to our very first trip together, to San Francisco,
and got a tour of the tea house garden. We strolled a big part of the place
outside of the arboretum section – the Alpine garden, the flowery brook (my
favorite spot), the demonstration garden, etc. We visited the Insectarium for
as long as Valerie could take it. We did not, however, partake of the
insect-based food items available for purchase. Instead, we ate at the gardens’
regular cafeteria, which offered pretty good food. In the States such a place
would be all heat lamp burgers and soggy fries; here I had a rather tasty
vegetarian sandwich (one could call it a veggie mush sandwich, since it was
filled with some sort of vegetarian pate). By this point it was starting to
rain, so we decided we’d call it a day on the outdoor part of the gardens and
head to the Biodome, which recreates four different habitats indoors. The
Biodome is located on the far side of the Olympic stadium from the gardens and
it took us a little while of wandering around in the rain to find our way to it
(the stadium grounds were actually kind of creepy – enormous in scale and
totally deserted).
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| Poppies will make them sleep |
The first environment was a tropical forest. Valerie hated
it since it was HOT and so she went directly ahead to the next, more temperate
environment while I strolled the first one a little bit. We caught up with each
other and went through the rest together. The whole thing is pretty cool. It’s
something of an indoor zoo, but the scale of it is enormous and so you really
feel immersed in these environments as you pass through them. The trip through
the place culminates in an arctic environment where there were penguins.
Penguins, penguins, penguins! We love penguins and so were very happy.
Penguins. There, I’ve said it again. Penguins.
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| Inside the Biodome |
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| Penguins, penguins, penguins! |
Over lunch we had looked at the map and figured out that we
had taken a much more complicated route than necessary to get there and on the
way back we took the easier approach – via a quick metro ride from the stop
just outside the gates of the Biodome. Then we napped. This trip involves more
napping than I’m used to on this trip – I think I’m still not 100% myself and I
get tired a little more easily than pre-surgery.
This weekend was one of the weekends of the Montreal Circus
Festival (Montreal is a city of many festivals). In advance of our trip I had
bought tickets to Limbo, a “circus cabaret extravaganza”. The show was at the
cabaret theater at the Montreal Casino. So, afer a quick dinner at a vegetarian
buffet on Saint Denis St. (I’m *trying* to eat right – the buttery croissants
at reakfast aren’t helping), we took the
Metro out to the Jean Drapeau staion on the island and then a bus from there. I
rarely visit casinos and so just stepping into the place was a head trip. The
cabaret theater was pretty cool looking – we felt like we were having quite an
adventure even before the show started.
The show itself was quite excellent – circus acts
(contortionist, silks aerialist, sword swallower/fire-eater, acrobats, etc.)
accompanied by a cool band – three pieces that created a lot of sound! It was
like a Cirque du Soleil show but on an intimate cabaret scale. Very cool –
mesmerizing.
Saint Denis Street had been hopping with Circus Festival
street performers when we were on our way out and so after the show we decided
to walk that route back to Philippe’s place. We stopped at
Juliette et Chocolat on Saint Denis St. where Valerie had a
scrumptious hazelnut chocolate bombe and I, still trying to be good, had just a
decaf cappuccino. Once back in the hotel room I indulged by eating three
M&M’s, which made me feel like I had had a chocolatey dessert. A little.
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| The circus was in town |
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| Drummers on stilts |
Day 3 (Saturday)
Our Saturday breakfast companions included both Marc and a
couple from Belgium. The Belgians did not have the common decency to know how
to speak English (they did know enough to express that they were teachers – and
so they and Valerie exchanged some teacher gang signs) and so Valerie and I sat
largely mute while Philippe, Marc and the Belgians jabbered away in that
guttural “language” they all speak. Being a good host, Philippe would
periodically turn the conversation to English and would catch us up on what
they had been saying. One interesting coincidence was that it turned out that
the Belgians and Marc lived within a few miles of each other – just on opposite
sides of the French/Belgian border. Apparently gas is cheaper in Belgium and
Marc regularly crosses the border and goes to their town to fill up.
Our activity for the day was visiting Old Montreal which
was, to tell you the truth, a little bit of a disappointment. I was expecting
something like Old Town Alexandria, but Old Montreal was dominated by schlocky
tourist stuff – with not much even worthy of browsing. Unfortunately, it turned
out we had taken the most schlocky route into the area. When we returned there
for dinner on Monday we approached via a different route and got a better feel
for how the gives you the feel of a 19th century section of a
European city – it felt less touristy-schlocky coming from that direction.
We didn’t really have much lunch. Generally, Valerie’s idea
of a light lunch is to eliminate all the courses except for dessert, and so our
lunch was nut-dipped chocolate-covered bananas. This may not have been as
heart-healthy as, say, a salad, but at least it had a large component of fruit
and nuts –the chocolate dip was the only unhealthful part. Once finished
exploring Old Town we returned back to the B&B for, yes, a nap, in
preparation for what promised to be an interesting evening.
Valerie’s college friend Deena lives in Montreal. The two of
them had been slightly in touch over the years in the Facebook sort of way but
hadn’t seen each other face to face in over thirty years. Part of the reason
for this is that they had rarely even been in the same country over the years. Right
after college Deena had decamped to Israel to live on a kibbutz and she
subsequently moved to Montreal with her husband (a native Montrealer, whom she
met on the kibbutz).
Valerie called Deena Friday night and they arranged that we
would meet Deena and her husband for dinner on Saturday. I’m always leery of
these sorts of setups – sometimes they’re great, occasionally they’re really
awkward, but usually even if they’re fun for the old friends they’re boring for
the spouses, who are total strangers. Not so in this case. The four of us all
got along really well and lingered for several hours over dinner.
Interestingly, neither of them speaks any French. He’s just old enough to have
grown up before the big French nationalist/separatist movement gathered steam,
and in those days people on the English-speaking side of town didn’t learn
French. I think it was fun for them too to have an excuse to get out of their
(almost) suburban neighborhood and into one of the funky parts of town for a
night out.
I should mention that the restaurant we went to for dinner
was a Burmese place called Dakon. Valerie and I had spotted it Friday night on
our walk through the Gay Village. “I love Burmese food!”, Valerie said. “You do
not,” I replied, suspecting that she was pulling my leg. After all, there are
very few Burmese restaurants around and I doubted that she had ever even tasted
Burmese food. A lesson I should have learned long ago is: Do not doubt Valerie.
It turns out that years back she and another college friend has as their
regular meeting place a Burmese restaurant back in New York. And by the way,
the food at Dakon is excellent. And they can customize the dishes from
mild to spicy (or as I call it, bland to regular).
Which leads me to ask: why are there so few Burmese
restaurants, anyway? Burma has eight times the population of El Salvador and
yet while the D.C. area has more Salvadorean restaurants than you can shake a
stick at (this is a “guesstimate” on my part – I must admit that I have never
actually tried shaking a stick at even a single Salvadorean restaurant), it has
few, if any, Burmese restaurants. Are there not a lot of natural restaurateurs
from Rangoon? Are they more focused on catchy shaving-related road signs? Maybe
they just never emigrated in large numbers to the U.S. Who knows. All I know is
that my dish (eggplant on coconut rice) was pretty darn delicious and I will
gladly eat Burmese food again if I ever come across another Burmese restaurant
(FYI, the one in New York closed years ago).
After dinner the four of us strolled back towards Saint
Denis Street. The circus festival was still going on (Montreal is a
city of many festivals) and we watched part of a free performance before
Valerie’s friends said their goodbyes and headed home. Valerie and I stayed
until the end of the performance and then headed back past Dakon down to the
river because this weekend was also part of the International Fireworks
Festival (Montreal is a city of many festivals) and that was the night that
Poland was presenting its entry, starting at 10 PM. As you might expect in a
case where national pride is on the line, it was a pretty spectacular display,
with musical accompaniment featuring songs by famous Polish artists including
Miley Cyrus and AC/DC.
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| Circus Festival performers |
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More circus acts
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| Polish fireworks |
