Montreal is a lovely, lovely city. I realize that we were there in the summer and that the winter is quite noticeably different, but I think we'd be happy to move there - French and all other issues notwithstanding. Although we did learn that when you move to Canada, you are required to provide an inventory of everything you own, with its value in Canadian dollars! If we're going to do it, I suppose that now would be the time, since we just got rid of 75% of our stuff...
Anyway, on Wednesday (July 8th) we drove up from the Adirondacks and had no trouble whatsoever crossing the border into Canada. We found the place we were staying fairly easily and our host, Brad Hurley, found us some lunch and made us very welcome. I responded to his hospitality by taking a two-hour nap, waking up just in time to take a shower and go out on the town. We took the metro downtown and found it to be ridiculously easy to navigate, fortunately. As luck would have it, William's cousin from Australia, Jeremy, was in Montreal at the same time, so we met him for dinner, found Burritoville, and then headed for O'Regans pub where the Irish session was going to be. FYI, Montreal has excellent local hard cider.
Thursday, the Kaplan/Jones contingent from the Adirondacks came up to Montreal. William opted to stay in and practice but I went out for the day and had a wonderful time. We went to the Botanical Gardens for the afternoon and I sincerely wanted to go back another day, even though it turned out not to be an option. All of the gardens are well designed and set up so you can go through individual ones as quickly or as slowly as you want. If you have the time, you can continue past the main gardens and go up to the Arboretum, which takes up most of the total space of the park, but it's just as fulfilling to pick a few of the theme gardens and take your time looking at them. After the Arboretum, we wandered down to the Old Port area, where everyone but me went to a fancy dinner at Chez Queux. I went to the Indian place two doors down - Restaurant Kashmir - not as fancy (or expensive) but very very good all the same. We met up afterwards to go to Cirque du Soleil's new show, OVO, and here's where my luck really kicked in: Alan Kaplan (Miriam's dad) was not feeling well and had decided to stay in New York that day, so I got the extra ticket and had the privilege of seeing my fifth Cirque du Soleil show. It was, of course, stupendous and magical and all the other things that people say about the shows...it was also EXTREMELY loud and my ears were ringing a bit afterwards. I made it home on the metro all by myself with no problems and fell into bed immediately and gratefully.
Friday we went to the Jean-Talon Market with Brad. AMAZING. It takes up an entire city block and it's got everything: produce, prepared foods, wine and cider sales and tastings, flowers and plants...and then around the outside of the main pavilion are the permanent shops...wine, cheese, meats, ice cream, everything you can imagine and nothing but the best. And it's open every day! The most obvious difference from a regular farmer's market, as far as the produce goes, was that instead of a pile of one vegetable next to a pile of another vegetable, most of the vendors (unless they only sold one or two things) arranged the items tastefully in baskets and combined colors or sizes or different types until the entire display was something you couldn't possibly pass up, simply because it was so attractive. The samples that were put out for tasting practically called out to you from across the market...I have a few photos but I really didn't do it justice; someday I want to go back and spend the whole day there with the camera. Friday night we went over to another friend's house to play some Irish music (surprise!). We met Guillaume 2 years ago at Friday Harbor Irish Music Camp and haven't crossed paths since then, so it was very nice to see him, and we had a terrific session with some friends of his. That turned into another late night – we left at a semi-reasonable hour but had to wait about 45 minutes for the bus from the metro to Brad's house.
Saturday it RAINED. Before it started, William and I decided to ignore the weather forecast and went over to Ile de la Visitation to walk around for a while, and then decided it was time for lunch just as it started sprinkling. We tried the falafel place right by the park (I can't find or remember the name, unfortunately) which was superb, and I distinguished myself by nearly getting through the entire order in French...until she asked me a question and I said 'Si' instead of 'Oui' (pronounced 'Way' in Quebec, by the way). At least I tried. The rain just got worse and worse – we walked back to the house just fine and got ready to go to a party with Brad and Claire, but by the time we got going it was absolutely pouring and we heard later that part of the road we had been on was flooded for a while. It was a 2-hour drive and we took about 3 hours total – when we finally arrived, there was a great party in full swing, in a gorgeous house with a pond in the backyard, full of interesting people (mostly Irish musicians, of course) and fabulous food. Worth the drive, I'd say...but I wasn't driving so I can't really say anything there. We met several people there who were going to be at the Catskills Irish Arts Week starting on Sunday (the next day) so that gave us a lot to look forward to.
And that is where I will leave this post: just before a week in the Catskills with amazing musicians and adequate lodgings.
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