Je me souviens

Roger and I just came back from a weekend in Montreal. It was one of those rare moments when Roger up and said "Hey, I feel like going somewhere this weekend." And you've got to ride that wave when it comes, because it doesn't come often. (Although they are fun when they happen: The last time Roger proposed an impromptu trip we had a whirlwind weekend in DC!)

Of course, these last-minute proposals tend to put me in a planning frenzy. Roger made the suggestion on Tuesday, and we started to scramble to find potential places to stay and sites to visit. We also didn't know a thing about Montreal, except that it was about 3 hours away. We desperately missed the plethora of Borders and Barnes & Nobles in Chicago, as, surprisingly, we didn't find much in Hanover in terms of books on Montreal. We did most of our research online, which can be good and bad. I looked up tons of stuff on restaurants, bookstores, neighborhoods, and sites of interest. Printed out pages and pages of info, all for a 36-hour visit.

Of course, everyone in the Northeast must have had the same idea as we did because a lot of the places we were interested in staying, B&Bs mainly, were already booked up. One place we really liked, Anne ma soeur Anne, was really lovely and the owner apologized for being all occupied. We settled on Jade Blue B&B in the Latin Quarter.

We drove up Friday night after work. The drive itself wasn’t too bad – a lot of cow pastures though (on the trip home, we made sure to switch the car’s AC to recycle air). We even had our passports ready, but didn’t have to show them.

The good thing was the Latin Quarter is pretty central, close to many metro lines and within walking distance to Old Montreal and the port area. The bad thing was it had a lot of sex shops and whatnot, being that it was formerly the Red Light district. There was a lot of foot traffic, and not necessarily salacious crowds, still it was a little disturbing to arrive at night with flashing signs for “danseuses nues”. A rude introduction, but once we got settled into the B&B, which actually was pretty well-appointed, we started to look forward to visiting areas outside our immediate neighborhood.

On Saturday, we spent the morning walking around Plateau Mont-Royal. It’s a really great residential area, not unlike Lincoln Park. Lovely walk-up houses and lots of shops and restaurants on St. Laurent and St. Denis. St. Laurent was definitely the “hipper” of the two, but I preferred the quieter St. Denis, with its wider streets and pretty windows. We were walking around 10AM, and not a lot of people were out yet, a few young families strolling about. I got to use some of my paltry French skills when we poked into stores and when we bought fries at the funky Frites Alors! – we ordered a large cone of fries with remoulade sauce, greasy, but awesome.

When it started to rain, so we headed for the Underground City, which is a series of underground malls and shops underneath the southern part of Montreal, all connected by the metro. We kind of got lost trying to find our way to the Underground City, but fortunately, we ran into a man who was dropping his son off at Chinese School in Chinatown, and he directed us to one of the entrances. The malls were okay. Perhaps it was all the fries we ate, but we started to feel a bit lethargic after going through one tunnel after another. We took the metro back to our B&B and took a nap.

We woke up a hour later, refreshed and ready to head out again. We were hoping to see if there were any tickets left to Franz Ferdinand, this rock band from Glasgow that sort of sounds like those slightly punk bands from the 80s (Blondie, even The Cure). They were playing at the Metropolis. The sex shop area was also near some famous music venues. Unfortunately it was sold out, so we had dinner instead. After dinner, a nice Italian place, we headed out to Crescent Street by McGill University in the western, more English-speaking area of the city. Roger was a little more comfortable in this part of town, although we both thought it had a generic feeling to it – you know, Hard Rock Café-types and all.

On Sunday, we work up early. The day before was mostly gray with bouts of rain. Sunday was beautiful, very bright and sunny. We went to the Notre Dame Basilica (incidentally, where Celine Dion got married) for mass, although my French wasn’t good enough to understand the readings (there were no missals). When we got to the part when you give peace to one another, I noticed that the lady sitting in front of us was my HIGH SCHOOL FRENCH TEACHER from Merced, Madame Evans!! That was TOO WEIRD!

We politely waited until after the mass to have our mini-reunion on the church steps outside. So funny! She just retired from teaching and was on a trip through French Canada, the Laurentides, to see fall foliage and visit small French towns. Bi-zarre. I used to TA for her husband’s social studies class, too. They were such a cute couple – like Mr. & Mrs. Santa Claus. Roger had fun meeting her, too. After we parted ways, Roger and I took a walk through Old Montreal and along the port before driving home.

Pretty eventful. We still have a few neighborhoods we’d like to check out – on a future visit, perhaps. Overall a very nice trip.