Montreal, jour troix

The list of ways for me to write about shopping just isn’t an extensive one. I can tell you I bought two pairs of socks adorned with Union Jack patterns on them and a pair of red pants at H&M on our last full day in Montreal, continuing my personal quest to spice up my wardrobe in 2015, and I can tell you that Gina, the hip edgy sk8r gurl that she is, bought a hat at Vans; the truth of the matter, though, is that walking in and out of shops all morning, even on as bustling and energizing a street as Saint Catherine’s is, just doesn’t make for the most fascinating reading material.

We did manage to find the heart of the Underground City on our way back to our new hotel (quick review: very minimalist and modern, with not much warmth in the atmosphere inside and a disappointingly small room. The bathroom was heavenly, though, I must admit.), making up for our struggles in that endeavor the day before, so score one for the Americans. While it really was no different in makeup than nearly every other mall I’ve been in, it has a huge advantage during the freezing winters of Montreal in that visitors can access it from the metro system and don’t need to take a single step in the frigid outdoor air to visit countless retail establishments and entertainment options.  

Hotel St. Paul

The evening’s activities were more appealing to me – namely our Italian dinner at a restaurant very close to the first hotel we stayed in, near Notre-Dame Basilica. Gina did the best she could with her veal parmesan, and I consumed an entire plate of pasta carbonara like the appalling glutton that I am, like I hadn’t eaten a meal since the last time Michigan was good at football, etc etc.  I washed it down with a bottle of Corona, and because Gina is much classier than I can ever hope to be, she had red wine.

We then made our second trek to the Bell Centre in two nights, though this time we would actually get to see a hockey game. After discovering only the night before that the World Junior Championship was being held in Montreal, as we were surrounded by hordes of Canadian supporters on the metro headed to watch their youngsters triumph over Finland on their way to an eventual tournament title, I had looked up the schedule and found that Germany would be playing Slovakia on our last night in town. Tickets, as one might guess for a game involving two nations from central Europe playing in eastern Canada, were very cheap.

The calm before the storm. Too dramatic?

It was actually an exciting game, won 5-2 in the end by Slovakia, enabling the victors to gain a small measure of revenge against their oppressors of 1939. Slovakia would go on to finish third in the 10-team tournament, so it was fun (for me, at least) to get to watch a group of young players that seems to be on the rise and should have a chance to be even more successful as they develop with age and gain more experience on the international stage.

While all that is fine and dandy, a real highlight for Gina and I was the group of six or seven young Canadians who sat in front of us during the first period. I’ve never seen such frenzied activity on Tinder – the swipes left and right were coming too fast and furiously for my eyes to process. The girl directly in front of me had actually matched an hour or so beforehand with the captain of Germany, who likely should have his mind on other things – I don’t know, getting ready to play a game, perhaps – instead of being on Tinder in the dressing room, but what can you do? She messaged him, of course, and I hope something works out for those potential lovebirds.

We finished our evening with a couple of outrageously-priced drinks at the hotel bar, beverages that weren’t even that good, and got to bed early as we left Montreal at 7 the next morning to make the 400-mile drive back to New Jersey, where we spent New Year’s Eve catching up for a bit with my aunt and uncle, eating fondue, competing in an epic decorating battle (which I obviously won) to create the best gingerbread man, and watching the endlessly cheesy Ryan Seacrest host his show from Times Square. Talk about balls dropping with that guy, I’ll tell you…

Happy New Year!

My next adventure will be a return trip to Columbia at the end of January. After attending a football game, a women’s soccer match, and a men’s and women’s swim meet on my visits this fall, I’ll make it the quadruple by seeing South Carolina square off in a true battle of the basketball titans against Georgia. I’m already feeling tingly. Until then.

Montreal, jour deux

After sitting in a car for six hours and consuming four delightful courses for dinner the day before, some physical activity that required ambulatory locomotion was essential.

We had three sites on our list to see for the day and mapped out our route in the hotel before we left in the morning, as once we were out of range of a Wi-Fi connection for our phones, we were on our own for directions. The route was relatively simple and circuitous and would take us back to the hotel in mid-afternoon, after ice skating at Parc La Fontaine, taking in the views of Montreal from Parc du Mont-Royal, and walking around the campus of McGill University, in that order.

It really wasn’t too complicated of an endeavor, especially for two people that have been fortunate enough to travel as extensively and successfully in Europe as Gina and I have. Between us, we’ve managed to navigate everywhere from Scandinavia to Iberia, from the British Isles in the west to Poland in the east. Surely another country on the continent we call home wouldn’t be that daunting of a challenge.

Imagine our surprise, then, when we didn’t have much of an idea where we actually were after emerging from the bowels of Montreal’s ultra-efficient subway system, walking down a busy boulevard to the entrance of a large green space, and beginning our gradual climb up the trails of a small mountain for the better part of an hour, There were plenty of other walkers out, a good sign to be sure, but we didn’t see any maps along the way. We had intended to go skating on a body of water that had been frozen over, not an artificially constructed public rink, and when we spotted signs along the trail for the Lac des Castors, we figured we were in business.

The problem was, Parc La Fontaine did not appear nearly as large on Google Maps as the length of the walk we were on, so doubts consistently lingered in our minds. When we saw people climbing to a lookout point at the top of the mountain, we followed Gina’s first rule of travel and headed for where the pretty pictures could be taken. Gina got a GoPro pole for Christmas, making the art of the selfie much easier for people who don’t want to ask other tourists and travelers to take a picture of them, so we did our business overlooking the most picturesque, stunningly arresting view of all of Montreal. Fingers sufficiently frozen in the numbing cold weather, we went inside what appeared to be a visitor center on the summit to warm up. 

Hard to beat this view

We consulted a map near all the brochures extolling the virtues of the tourist sites of Quebec, which we ignored, and were bemused when we saw where we were. We had made a right at Rue Rachel instead of making the left we needed to make to head to Parc La Fontaine, so we’d ended up stumbling on Mont Royal, the triple-peaked hill just west of the heart of the city to which it gave its name. The park on Mont Royal was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, who is perhaps better known for co-designing a little place you may have heard of in New York City called Central Park.

There is no more gratifying feeling when traveling then to discover something new, or to see something when it was least expected. We were going to see Mont Royal at some point that day, but to find it on a complete fluke somehow made it better, in an odd way. We went back into the open air and stood for a while, admiring the skyline of the city and gazing, as silently as a cliché, miles into the distance, including the St. Lawrence River and the Champlain Bridge we’d crossed entering Montreal the day before.

After descending the stairway from heaven – at least, it seemed that high when we walked up, huffing and puffing and stopping multiple times to catch our breath and rest our aching quad muscles – we left the park and headed for nearby McGill.

McGill has interested me for a while – I looked fairly seriously into its graduate programs in art history – as it’s an American-accredited institution and an English-language university right in the middle of a predominantly French-speaking city and province. It has a strong academic reputation and tradition, having been founded in 1821, and boasts a large number of international students. Its urban campus backs right up onto the base of Mont Royal and is conveniently located near several metro stops and the lively main commercial shopping thoroughfare in Montreal – Rue Sainte-Catherine. I can’t say it’s the most beautiful school I’ve ever seen, though my view is at odds with that of Travel and Leisure Magazine, which named McGill’s 79-acre grounds and its plethora of stone buildings one of the 17 most beautiful university campuses in the world in its September 2012 issue.  We walked around for perhaps a half an hour, and saw everything one could fairly expect to see given that none of the buildings were open due to the Christmas holiday.  

Looking onto McGill's campus

Our final stop while it was still light outside was the place we’d intended to visit first, Parc La Fontaine. Our research before the trip told us it would be an interesting place to go ice skating simply because it was an actual, real pond that had frozen over, rather than going in mind-numbingly boring, endless circles while dodging hordes of little children and teenagers who can’t be trusted to stay upright for any longer than two seconds at a much more crowded, artificial rink.

While the plan was good in theory, we (read: I) made a slight oversight: when we arrived at the park, there was nowhere to rent skates, unlike at one of those rinks I so detest. The park is right in the middle of a residential neighborhood, so while it was a great place for locals, it wasn’t ideal for tourists from America who didn’t think about, I don’t know, needing ice skates. Instead, we made the best of it as we managed to do some skating in our shoes, and had a leisurely end to our afternoon strolling hand-in-hand across the ice while the sun went down.

Nice day for a skate..on shoes

Our plans for dinner were a bit more low-key than our experience at Chez Suzette. Gina wanted to explore Montreal’s famous Underground City, a 20-mile network of shops, apartments, and restaurants connected to the metro system that is particularly beneficial in the winter when the weather is so harsh. As we reached Bonaventure metro station, one of the entrances to the Underground City, we found ourselves surrounded by throngs of people wearing Team Canada hockey jerseys, scarves, and other assorted apparel.

Before our trip, I had checked to see if the Montreal Canadiens were in town for a game when Gina and I would be in town, but when I saw they were away for our entire stay, I assumed there would be no hockey for us. Gina silently rejoiced, praising her good fortune. Somehow I managed to convince her to follow the crowd, who were headed to the Bell Centre, and after a bit of sports sleuthing on my part, we figured out the World Junior Championship was being contested and there was a game in Montreal that night – Canada vs. Finland.

At the box office, I inquired how much tickets would cost and was dismayed (Gina probably couldn’t have been more thrilled) to hear that $66 was the cheapest ticket available, ranging all the way up to $130 for better seats in the 21,273-seat capacity arena. There was zero chance or desire for us to afford that, so we moved on in our efforts to find dinner. Much of the Underground City was closed by that time of night, so it was onto Plan B.

We took the metro back to the closest stop to our hotel, and our proximity to Chinatown came in handy. After peeking in the windows of a few places, we settled on an all-you-can-eat buffet place because we’re just that classy. In addition to food you would rightly expect a Chinese place to have, other options included pizza, spaghetti with meat sauce and/or meatballs, jello, and pudding. What a selection. I opted for fried rice, some type of meat that vaguely resembled General Tso’s chicken, and shrimp that still had the eyes and feelers/tentacle things, attached. Gina did, in fact, take a jello square in addition to her mystery meat and fried rice dish. All-in-all, it actually wasn’t a bad meal by any means, and what I love about us is that we make the most out of every place we go, no matter how fancy or informal.

We still had one more day in Montreal to come, which I’ll write about in my next post. It really is a fantastic city, and despite our directional challenges over the first couple days, we were growing more and more comfortable with the environment and the locals. The next day would bring a change of hotels, but more fun activities. Hockey and shopping – the best of both worlds for us. More soon.

Montreal, jour un

I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve been excited to wake up at 6 AM. No matter how much sleep you get the night before or how much you’re looking forward to the next day, it just isn’t a fun thing to do.

This trip, though, cracked that list. Gina and I were up well before the sun rose to get on the road to Montreal, a trip we’ve had in the works for a few months now. We knew it would be cold once we got there and had come to terms with that, but had been dreading the chance of heavy snow making the 400-mile drive up from New Jersey a treacherous endeavor, certainly a plausible possibility given a venture through upstate New York at the end of December.

We were fortunate, then, that the only snow we saw in six hours was in patches on the ground in the northwoods of the Adirondacks and the farmlands of Quebec. After failing to go to Madison Avenue in New York City over Thanksgiving, I’m pleased to report that we did make it Madison Avenue in New York this time around – in Albany, the state capital, where we took a few pictures of the capitol building and stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts, where a homeless man asked how tall I was and if I played basketball…before proceeding to solicit me for money. And there I was, thinking I was something special. I even felt flattered for a minute.

The rest of the drive was uneventful, if not supremely picturesque. It must be absolutely gorgeous to head that way during autumn to see the full effects of changing foliage, but alas, we had to content ourselves with the relatively unspoiled forests and trees that make up eastern and northern New York. I had been eagerly anticipating the chance to drive in Canada, particularly in Quebec as French is the primary language of the province and would be all over its road signs (I don’t speak French, so this titillating sense of the unknown and the distinct possibility of committing some unknown driving infraction appealed to me greatly), but I’m here to tell you that it was a bit of a letdown. Yes, I was permitted to go 100 on the highway, and reaching that triple digit mark was exciting, but I knew from previous family trips to Canada when I was younger that it was in kilometers per hour and not miles per hour. The scenery into Montreal from Plattsburgh, New York was nothing to write home about – if you want to see snowy farms, Iowa is the place for you – and drivers in Quebec were just as terrible as they are in the US, even if it was a small sample size on which to judge.

Bonjour, Canada

The border, though, is where the fun truly began. To prevent from being charged absurdly high international rates on our phones, we turned our cellular data off. My GPS was handy for navigating us to Montreal itself, and to be fair you couldn’t miss its skyline, but when it said we had 23.5 miles to go to our hotel as we crossed the bridge over the St. Lawrence River and had downtown Montreal square in our sights, I angrily cast it aside. Fortunately Gina is conversant in French, but such is the spoiled life of young adults in 2014 that without phones for backup, doing a bit of old school navigating in a different country in which English isn’t the first language with only a map, street signs, and addresses as guides was a challenge.

I was very proud of us when we reached our destination, the LHotel in beautiful Old Montreal, only stopping once to pull over near the 19^th-century, Second Empire-style Montreal City Hall just a few streets away to consult our map. Montreal is the second-largest city by population in Canada and the ninth-largest in North America, so to get there and drive in the heart of a city of that size without really knowing exactly what we were doing or with any electronic assistance was an accomplishment.

Home sweet home

We picked a great location to base ourselves for the first couple days of our stay in Montreal. We were in walking distance from everything in the old part of town, which dates back to the late 1600s, and were happy to go off exploring and familiarizing ourselves with our immediate environs. We were one minute away from the Notre-Dame Basilica, completed in the Gothic Revival style in 1829. It was impressive during the late afternoon, but coming back at night to see the brilliant blues of the stained glass windows lit up was something to behold. We walked through the various little shops in Bonsecours Market, which was completed in 1847 and was the area’s main public market for more than 100 years. We strolled through Place Jacques-Cartier, a public square filled with lighted trees and hotspots – essentially small, controlled fires that people can gather around during the winter months – and lined on both sides of the broad, steep street by restaurants, a preponderance of which seemed to feature pasta and pizza.

As much as we love those two foods – and believe me, we do – we opted for something a bit more local for dinner. The four-course meal at Chez Suzette – Caesar salad, French onion soup with perfectly melted cheese on top, a dinner crepe with ham, Swiss cheese, asparagus, and béchamel sauce and a dessert crepe with vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, and Chantilly cream – was delicious enough, to be sure, and served by our terrific waiter Pedro, and though we were there for over two hours that wasn’t the highlight of the evening.

Time for dessert

That honor went to the young woman dining two tables down from us. I’ve never seen anything like it, and this was one occasion in which I had no shame in staring. She was eating by herself, which was interesting to me because even though I do it all the time, it’s rare to see a good-looking woman doing that, at least in my experience. She performed the sign of the cross before her food came, and I’m Catholic, so hey, that’s fine. Maybe a little much for me personally, but no problem there. She began taking frantic notes in a little journal, and hey, I get it, I blog, I love watching people, maybe it was a little excessive but again, I didn’t think it was anything over the top. But that’s when things got interesting.

Once her food arrived, she whipped out her small camera and began taking pictures like it was a runway in New York during fashion week. She arranged her napkin in three different places, the right side, in front of, and the left side of her plate, before finally deciding she didn’t need it all her for her pictures and putting it on her lap. Then she lifted the small bit of maple syrup in a receptacle similar to the one you’d find on cough medicine or Pepto-Bismol bottles, sniffed it, put it down, pulled it back up to sniff again, put it down, then reached up for a third whiff before drizzling some of it over her meal. Then she took her camera, tilted her head to the side, and took a multitude of selfies of the side of her head, which was covered in her long, black hair. Not even an inch of her face or cheek, mind you. All hair, and I promise that’s not an exaggeration. Then she took the rest of the maple syrup, sniffed it, put it down, sniffed it again, and then poured the rest over her dinner, as if in the five minutes that had passed before her previous sniff series that the syrup had been poisoned by one of those notorious Québécois. She took more selfies, this time managing to actually get her face in the shots, before closing her meal by taking several pictures of her empty plate and performing another sign of the cross.

That about closed our first night in Montreal, as we’re old and fell asleep watching the Steelers-Bengals game in the hotel. Unlike our New York adventures, my goal is to blog at the end of each of the three days we’re here. Today we covered even more ground – 7.8 miles of walking, to be exact – and witnessed some of the best views of the entire city. More details about that, and our escapades on the ice, soon.