Our Trip To Canada: Exploring Montreal, Part 1

Like most cities not located in the US, Montreal is a fairly walkable place and we did a whole lot of walking while we were there. Our hotel was about a ten-minute walk from Geoff and Dave’s apartment, the area we were in was full of things to see and do, and we weren’t that much further away from the old part of the city so we could walk there as well. We didn’t walk everywhere – there were things we wanted to do that were neither nearby nor convenient from public transportation and Geoff was happy to haul us around in his giant American pickup truck – but we did a lot of walking in general.

This had some interesting effects.

For one thing, all of that walking rather handily balanced out most of the meals that we enjoyed and the snacking that we did. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I do not regard vacations as being the proper province of nutrition – that’s what home is for – so I was happy to partake of pretty much all of the lovely food on offer and then try to walk it off for the rest of the day. I don’t know if I succeeded on a dietary level, but I certainly succeeded in justifying to myself the meals that we ate as well as a mountain of snacks taller than the pile I usually take an entire semester to consume. Three cheers for new flavors of potato chips in foreign lands!

For another thing, we got to Montreal not long before the traditional move-out day for apartment-dwellers in Quebec so there was plenty to see as we strolled by. There used to be a law in Quebec that apartment leases turn over on July 1. It was originally designed to prevent landlords from tossing people out in the middle of a Canadian winter. They repealed the law a while ago but people still observe the tradition, so everyone who is not planning to renew their lease moves out all at once on Canada Day. Not everyone feels it’s worth moving all of their stuff when they go, which means that the sidewalks are just lined with nice stuff, free for the taking. In Madison this is called Hippie Christmas and it happens on August 14, but it’s much the same principle. We were not in a position to take advantage of this, having only brought carry-on luggage, but we did notice a lot of interesting things on the sidewalks that weren’t there the next time we walked by.

For yet another thing, when you’re in Quebec and walking along the streets you notice an awful lot of Quebec license plates. This probably should not have made as much of an impression on me as it did, being in Quebec and all, but I grew up in the Philadelphia area in the 1970s, which meant going down the Jersey shore every August along with everyone else in the Philadelphia metro region and at least a third of the population of Quebec so it was kind of a throwback for me seeing all those license plates with “Je me souviens” at the bottom.

After a brief stop at our hotel to drop our bags and get a bit of rest we walked over to Geoff and Dave’s. They’re in the process of buying a house in Montreal while selling the one they have in San Francisco, and while this works itself out they’re staying in an apartment way up on the 18th floor – it has a lovely view of the city and a balcony where you can hang out if the weather is nice, and so we did that for a while.

The first photo looks over much of McGill University (including the Gothic-inspired compound that Geoff and Dave call Hogwarts because, well, look at it…) and the mountain that gives the city its name. The second one is the building across the street, and I love the fact that someone thought to paint a pool on the roof.

We did a lot of just hanging out at their apartment, which is how vacations should be, I think. You spend time with the people you came to see, not doing much of anything except enjoying the company and the food.

After a bit of that we walked over to the Boulevard St. Laurent, where the fun shops are in that part of town, apparently. We followed the World Cup from bar to bar, since they all had televisions pointed out into the street, and eventually ended up at a dumpling place for dinner before heading across the street for ice cream.

From there we walked over to a public park to burn off some of dinner. There are a lot of nice parks in Montreal, and we had a good time hanging out on a bench and watching people pass by.

Eventually it got dark and Geoff walked us back to our hotel since we hadn’t quite gotten our bearings yet and we spent the rest of the evening resolving all of the various e-sim issues that had plagued us all day. The room came with a balcony and since the night was cool and we were twelve floors up we decided that we could skip the AC and just leave the door open. This turned out not to be true, since a) the next day was a holiday in Quebec and b) we were adjacent to a college campus still full of students in the summer who were happy to celebrate that holiday, and thus we learned to kept the door shut.

The next day we had breakfast at our hotel and then walked over to Geoff and Dave’s, hung out a bit, and then jumped into the pickup to go to Mont Real – the Royal Mountain that looms over the city. It’s a pretty drive – Montreal is very hilly, which makes all the walking just That Much Healthier and provides glorious scenery as you drive – and we found the parking area pretty easily. We discovered later that you have to pay for parking even on Quebec Day, but fortunately most of the parking enforcement people had the day off so no harm done.

It’s a quick walk up from there to the top, where we found a wide observation area overlooking the city. It is remarkably attractive to Instagram influencers and wedding parties but if you are patient you can eventually find a spot by the railing and enjoy the view.

There’s also a big lodge of some kind right there, with restrooms, a gift shop, and large squirrels carved into the rafters and I’m sure that made sense to somebody.

From there we drove over to Westmount to see Geoff and Dave’s prospective house. Westmount was once a suburb and is now a municipal island entirely surrounded by Montreal, and there you will also find Geoff and Dave’s favorite local bagel place.

Apparently Montreal is known for its bagels – they insist, in fact, that their bagels are superior to those found in New York City – so we were looking forward to deciding this for ourselves. Montreal bagels are nicely chewy and completely coated in toppings on both sides – my poppy seed bagel probably disqualified me for the next three Olympics even as a spectator – and you have to love that about them. On the other hand, they are skinny – we were told that they came in Regular and Thin and I was genuinely surprised to find that we’d gotten the Regular – and while they are boiled as a proper bagel must be (which puts them head and shoulders above the steamed toroidal muffins that we have in the midwest) the water has honey it in which gives the bagels a sweet taste. They were, it has to be said, very good bagels and I was quite happy to go back for more, but New York all the way, baybeee.

Westmount is also a nice place to walk around. We found the local library which was closed for Quebec Day but the attached greenhouse was open for those who wanted to explore it. Why a library has an attached greenhouse is an interesting question, but perhaps in the Canadian winters a bit of warmth and greenery is just another thing to borrow for a while. We also found a great little park where people were setting up for a holiday concert and we hung out there for a while, watching in mild confusion as a young girl walked by carrying a resigned looking cat on a leash. You go, kid.

At some point we walked into L’Église Saint-Léon de Westmount, because we enjoy doing that sort of thing.

After a brief siesta back at our hotel which I spent watching Switzerland defeat Canada in the World Cup while Kim graded lab reports for her summer class we walked back over to Geoff and Dave’s to hang out for a bit. We had dinner plans but ended up canceling them because package delivery services are not very good at actually delivering packages when they say they will or, sometimes, at all, and in the end Kim, Dave and I wandered out to a nearby Lebanese restaurant to get takeaway. Not that Lebanese restaurant – that was closed. The other one. There’s a lot of Lebanese food in Quebec when you get right down to it, and in my experience pretty much all of it is good.

Also, there was champagne. Geoff is very much a champagne sort of person and he was happy to share this with us. I did not realize how many different kinds of champagne there are in this world, and it was a lovely thing to discover.

That night we remembered to shut the balcony door of our hotel and we slept much more soundly because of it.

The next day after breakfast we walked over to Geoff and Dave’s and then almost immediately Kim, Geoff and I headed back out to the Boulevard St. Laurent where we raided the European grocery store and the Hungarian deli because interesting food is a startlingly high percentage of why we go anywhere, really. We had a lovely lunch of Hungarian sausages and some kind of tasty chocolate torte and that’s just how we roll, yo.

Somewhere in there Geoff’s package actually arrived, which meant that nobody had to stay at home to wait for it so we all headed out toward downtown Montreal, with a side trip through McGill’s campus. You forget, working on a commuter campus, how big and landscaped an actual four-year residential campus can be.

Our first stop was Simon’s, a giant throwback of a department store where Kim found a couple of hats because, as one of my all-time favorite memes put it, “All better with hat.” My ability to absorb department store shopping is pretty limited, however, so I ended up hanging out by the front door watching people go by and to be honest I think I got the better end of that deal. It was an interesting crowd. I think my favorite was the middle-aged guy who spent an entire red light shouting conspiracy nonsense at the broader public and then when the light turned green he just stopped shouting and ambled on with his day. I’m not sure if anyone else even saw him, which does raise the question of whether he was simply a hallucination. It’s a strange world. You can never tell.

Our next stop was The Ring.

If you’ve never seen The Ring, it’s piece of modern art and it’s pretty much exactly what it says on the tin except bigger than you’d ever think reasonable or even possible. They’ve mounted it between two buildings and you can see it from a long way off. It’s hypnotic that way. To judge from our experience it’s a surprisingly popular attraction – we ended up sitting on a platform almost directly underneath it for a while and the foot traffic never stopped. Plus if you’re looking back toward McGill it frames the mountain pretty well.

Montreal is an enjoyable place to wander around, it turns out, and we spent some happy time doing that until we ended up in the park with the fire fountain and I have tried to find it on the map since then without success so you’re just going to have to take my word for it that it exists. It’s across the street from a couple of places where you can purchase baked goods and drinks on a hot day and there are benches and tables surrounding it where you can sit and discuss whatever’s in front of you, such as the wide array of influencers who find it irresistible. We never did see the flames – they don’t just happen automatically because flames, and there was no staff there at the time – but we did see a video of the fountain in action so we know they actually do that from time to time.

After that we wandered through the city and down to the riverfront.

We eventually found a pier where the Cirque du Soleil is headquartered. It’s right next to the giant Ferris wheel with the Canadian flag in the middle. You can’t miss it.

I have no idea what building this is, but you have to admit it is striking.

[EDIT:  Kim says this is the back end of the Chapelle below.]

 

Eventually we found our way to the Chapelle Notre Dame de Bon Secours Chapel, which was built in the 1770s on the ruins of a previous chapel that had burned down. It’s dedicated to sailors, and you can tell that from the wooden ship models that hang down from the ceiling at intervals.

It sits on a lovely street that parallels the river.

If you take that far enough and then hang a right, you end up on a very nicely kept little boulevard that goes steeply uphill like so much of Montreal, on which you will find the world’s smallest Dairy Queen. As Wisconsin residents we of course had to stop there.

From there we went further up the hill to where Andean Slash and his band were playing and then took the Metro back to Geoff and Dave’s apartment to rest up after our adventures.

Fully rested, we headed back to the Boulevard St. Laurent for a very nice dinner. Geoff and Dave are much more attuned to fine dining than I am so it was an experience. The food was very good, if a bit mystifying to me, and the place was hopping.

Boulevard St. Laurent is also, it turns out, near the Portuguese neighborhood in Montreal which meant that they sell pasteis de nata, referred to simply as “natas” there. This place would sell you a half-dozen in a cardboard tube that kept them hot all the way back, plus they had cans of a Canadian-made chinotto. Two of my favorite delicacies from my various travels, all in one place in a little shop in Canada! Life is good.

Also, the doner guy tried to wave us in, but after dinner and dessert we were able to resist his siren call as we headed back to Geoff and Dave’s to wait out the rain before returning to our hotel. 

Our Trip to Canada: Getting to Montreal

We thought about going back to Europe this summer. It’s been a great few years here that way, seeing parts of the world that I never thought I would see and then going back to do it again on a regular basis. If you have the chance, you should do it. It is the single best way there is to open your eyes and heart to the fact that there is a larger world out there beyond your experiences, one that has much to teach you if you will watch and listen.

“Travel isn’t always pretty,” said Anthony Bourdain. “It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”

Most of our travel experiences have been just fine, though. We’ve met some lovely people, seen some beautiful places, and generally returned richer for having done both, at least in a non-financial sort of way. And as for the finances, well, a) it’s not nearly as much as people think, and b) we don’t have anywhere near enough vices to drain our bank account properly so this is how we choose to spend our money.

It works for us.

There are limits even so, however, and when the price of airfare to Europe doubled in the two days we were looking into the matter, thanks to Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump losing his illegal and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran, we decided that perhaps we’d set our sights a bit nearer to home this year and save the more far-flung destinations for another time. Because there will be another time, at some point. That’s just how we roll these days.

In the end we decided that we’d visit Geoff and Dave, who had recently moved from San Francisco to Montreal. Neither of us had ever been to Quebec, and it’s been a while since we’ve seen Geoff and Dave anyway, so this sounded like a good plan.

We had a grand time of it, thanks.

We’ve got the prep for this sort of thing pretty much down now. Passports located. One carry-on and one personal item each because there will be laundry when we get there. Places to stay and flights booked thanks to Kim because she enjoys that part of it and leaving it to me would just not end well for anyone. A bit of research to figure out things we might want to do or see, though in this case not all that much since we were visiting family there and Dave had lived in Montreal for 17 years at one point so he knew it better than we would ever figure out. Friends who would take care of the critters at home. We even worked it out with Lauren so she could have my car while we were away and then drop it off at the bus station for us when we returned. We know how to do this travel thing.

Still tough to get out of bed at 5:40am, though.

We arrived at O’Hare and zipped through security fairly quickly, though they did search my personal bag by hand since I was carrying two packages of a particular cheese that Geoff hadn’t been able to find in Montreal. “It’s cheese,” I told them as they turned it over and back in their hands. They stared at me with the look you would expect from someone you had just told that you were running cheese into Canada, decided that this was Too Much Weird Shit to be dangerous, and let me go.

Everything is biometric now, by the way. They don’t really need your boarding passes anymore. You just show them your passport and smile pretty for the camera and you’re good to go. Sort of. The camera is a bit fussy, so I got the “Take your glasses off, sir” comment that made me think of the comedian Ismo who has a routine about how in the UK “sir” means that you have achieved a high honor but in the US “sir” means that you have made a small mistake, and at that point I had to try very hard not to laugh because Security Personnel are not paid to have a sense of humor and they generally respond by not having one and if you think something is funny they will get annoyed and these are people you do not want to annoy because then they will have to do Security Things and nobody involved in that process really wants that to happen.

So it’s just photos and databases these days and if I had any privacy left to lose I’d probably be annoyed but welcome to the New Panopticon. You know, for the kids.

Eventually we made it onto the plane and I think that if you’re going to have a window seat on a plane it should come with a window. Stands to reason. Mine, however, did not. There was one for the row ahead of me, but the person sitting there was resolutely uninterested in opening the shade for it. I suppose we should have switched seats, but it was a very small plane and once you sit down and buckle in on a plane that small you realize that no, you’re good where you are for the next couple of hours, thanks.

I had my book. I was fine.

Montreal’s airport is very nice and we found the Customs area fairly quickly. It’s all touchscreens now, and you spend about five to ten minutes pushing various virtual buttons to let them know that you’re not dangerous beyond simply being an American and then occasionally asking questions of the helpful uniformed staff nearby when none of the buttons seem to fit your situation. I did have to declare my cheese, it turned out, which sent me off into another room that Kim – not carrying any cheese – did not have to enter. I found an official looking person behind a station and he asked me what I had and I said “cheese” and he gave me much the same look that the security people in O’Hare had given me and sort of waved me through with a disdainful flick of his hand.

And suddenly we were free to move about Canada.

We found Dave by the exit and hopped onto a nearby bus, which now makes 22 cities in which I have been on public transportation, evenly divided between US and non-US cities. I am inordinately fond of this fact, and that probably tells you more about me than you need to know.

The bus took us into the city and then we got onto the metro. Subway cars in Montreal have big rubber tires rather than the usual steel wheels you find on railcars, and we took that to our station.

From there it was a short walk over to our hotel, a lovely place that gave us the same room number as my freshman dorm room back in college so that was easy to remember. It had a great view of the McGill University area of the city, which is a fact that will come back in the next post.

After a short rest we headed off to Geoff and Dave’s apartment, ready to begin our trip in earnest.