18 things about our weekend in Montréal
1. Our flight up was on a plane with propellers. That usually makes me nervous for some reason. It was a fine flight, but USAIR really needs to maintain some of their planes - the interior was straight up nasty.
2. The airport in Montréal is attractive, clean, and all that.
3. The hotel we stayed in was swank thanks to a great package deal on Site49... er, 56... 88.
4. When we walked into our big-ass corner hotel room, I exclaimed "Holy Moly!" in a french meets Apu voice. I adopted this as my catch-phrase for the whole weekend. Call me and I will do it on the phone for you.
No, really. Go ahead.
5. We arrived Saturday afternoon and immediately grabbed our guidebook and went shopping because, well, my wife married some metrosexual goofball. I was looking for a jacket and figured that the handy exchange rate would be advantageous. We went to many many many shops. I still don't have a new jacket.
6. For dinner, we looked in our guidebook and they recommended a place down in the old city center area. What do you call that? Le Olde Towne? I forget. But the guide book said that it was real touristy but it was worth it to go once and there were a few noteworthy places.
We found a place that looked cool and waltzed in forgetting it was a Saturday night, so naturally there were no tables except for one at 9:30. It was like 8:00 and being that we were nuts we said, "sure".
The whole point? Oh, well, you see we then wandered down to those pier things by the water... I forget if there was a name for those things. To anyone who has never been there they aren't really piers, but more like peninsulas. Like 20 piers put together. Ok, but it's all cute and manicured and touristy, but it's also really dark and we wandered around there really confused. There was this whole cool waterfall thing and these strange structures in a field and this free standing walkway thing.
I am sure in the daylight it would all of made sense.
7. Dinner was delightful. I'll try to figure out what the name of the place was after I check my debit card account.
8. The weather was great the whole time. The leaves were just starting to change, the sky was blue and sunny.
9. We hiked to the top of the mountain in the middle of the city. Great views. Our hotel was at the base of it, so we took sort of a wonky, long way up.
10. After coming down the mountain we wandered all over some neighborhood that was.. right over there. Near the place with the things. Yea. It was nice. Not much was open but it was fun to window shop. Lots of mod furniture stores.
11. We have sworn of Chinese in Canada. In Toronto we had Chinese one night - and it was ok. I can't remember specifics, but it was just sort of lackluster. Montréal's token Chinese meal took the hat. Amazingly inept and rude service coupled with a lame 'Canadian' menu and everything else in Chinese. The Chinese guys next to us had a table of things that were totally not on the French/English menu.
Mrs. Robot just looked this particular place up on line and almost every review mentions the rude service.
The only good part was watching the squatting kids and drug addicts coming in and out of the abandoned building across the street.
12. We ordered breakfast in Monday and as we were eating I commented on all the people I had seen that morning in the apartment building across the street. I pointed out the one apartment with the guy I had seen earlier who was wearing white bikini briefs - or actually, more like those 'banana hammock' things. Minutes later Mrs. Robot exclaims that she can see a nude guy in the apartment.. and then, "They're doing it!"
Yup, someone across the street was having the butt sex while we drank our coffee.
Sweet.
13. Upon arriving in Montréal, I had the sniffles, so I suspect I may have brought Yankee Sneezing Disease with me. Back in the USA, I have a full blown cold, which I suspect is really Canadian Beaver Fever. I apologize to both countries for starting an epidemic.
14. Montréal was sweet. I enjoyed it, even though I can barely read French and had to rely on Mrs. Robot's high school French very often.
It was disconcerting to speak to people with French accents who didn't cop an attitude. Not that I had many rude experiences in my one trip to France, but I had a few.
The people we spoke with seemed very patient to deal with our goofball lack of French.
Thanks.
15. After complaining about not being able to speak French, Mrs. Robot suggested I exclaim, "I don't speak French - I speak Freedom"
16. We watched the Simpson in French.
17. Did I mention fashion yet? I saw some really unfortunate jeans in Montréal (not saying NYC is without it's fashion tragedies).
18. Montréal Subway? Love it. Timely, clean, easy to figure out.
