Honeymoon Montreal

My honeymoon started on World Contraception Day.  This was totally accidental.  :-)

It started like any other vacation ... with me guzzling cough syrup.   Why do I get colds right before I get a rest?  I dunno.  Maybe it's my body, racked with stress and a depleted immune system ... telling me I need a vacation?  How fortuitous!

Anyway, the honeymoon.  A rather modern invention.  Supposedly original its purpose was to visit family and friends who couldn't come to the wedding.  Then it was re-conceived (again, pardon the pun) as a time for working on the new relationship (again ... oh, whatever).

I don't know how young newlyweds do it.  You're expected to have more fun than is humanly possible, because when the children arrive, of course, it's all over.  And if you've never traveled far with your new spouse, who knows what'll happen?  Travelling can be a stressful business to begin with - you're in a strange land, far from your schedule, and the basics of life like where to eat are totally up in the air.  It gets to me, certainly, when Google Navigation is barking at me to get in the far left lane and it doesn't see the 5 lanes of SUV's between me and it.  I'm not at my best.

But, Amy and I have been around the block, and are perfect travelling buds.  We don't need to be at a certain place at a certain time.  We have options and not obligations.  We're not afraid to walk anywhere - in the cold, in the rain, up hills.   We laugh. We are each others reading glasses for the world around us.  There will be no pressure on this honeymoon.

We started off crossing the Canadian border at the 1000 Islands.  The signs congenially, accomodatingly spoke in French and English.  But when we got into Quebec, they changed to all French as if to say, "Enough.  Conform to our ways or starve!"

Amy's hectic schedule as a trainer around New York State netted her about six billion Hilton points this year, enough for the three nights at the Montreal Embassy Suites.  It's across the street from the Palais du Congress de Montreal, which I call the Charms Candy building, as you can see on the left.   They had a Sistine Chapel exhibition which makes you say, "Wait - isn't that in Rome or something?"  But here's the thing.  It's really hard to see stuff on the actual Sistine Chapel, so they hang big life-size blow ups of the pieces which you walk through.

Ehhh.  Sounds a little hokey.  We didn't buy it.

On the advice of a Montreal native, we dined at Brit and Chips.  We had a chicken pie, which unlike Banquet's rather crummy version, didn't leak gravy out all over the table.  I had always wondered how they ate these on picnics.  We had Cod with a burgundy batter, and OK that might be a little more high-falutin than the newspaper-wrapped originals, but they were pretty durn good.  But get this .... the chips were French Fries!  Who knew?  :-)  And they taste very good with just a little sprinking of malt vinegar.   OH and I almost forgot ... mushy peas.  Fantastic!  Anyone will attest to my hatred of unadorned green peas,  but all you have to do is soak them overnight and boil them with sugar and salt until they fall apart, and MMMM!

Quebec is a land that has never reconciled their French and English

counterparts.  Hence these two statues ... actually one statue called The English Pug and The French Poodle.  Montreal has a lots of really great statues, but these were my favorite.

The two parts are at opposite ends of National Bank Square near Notre Dame.  One, an Englishman, is looking to the left.  The other, a French dame, is looking to the right.  They are a block apart.  But their dogs, an English pug and a French Poodle respectively, look longingly at each other across the square.  It speaks volumes, and I think it's more poignant than a thoughtless "let's all join hands and be one" statue.

We spent most of Sunday in the Montreal Botanical Gardens, across from the Olympic Stadium.  It dwarves just about every arboretum we've seen, and just goes on for blocks and blocks.  We didn't hit every corner, but we got some good highlights.  The bonsai trees really blew me away.  As you probably know, bonsai's are not a species, but a way of growing a tree so that it stays a dwarf.  For example, the tree to the left is about a foot tall, but it's a real tree and it's over 100 years old.  Astounding!


There are two quintessential Montreal dishes: poutine (fries and cheese curds smothered in gravy) and smoked meat.  After walking the gardens, Amy had grilled steak and I had the classic smoked meat sandwich - piled high on very thin bread with yellow mustard.  It resembles corned beef or pastrami, but it's less garlicky than the New York counterpart.  In fact, you smell this kind of spice all around Montreal - sage and smoke intermingled.

Then we wandered back into the Botanical gardens - in September evenings they get lit up.  Above is the Chinese garden, obviously.  Once long ago, I mistakenly took codeine and NyQuil on the same evening, and my dreams looked a lot like that.

So I want to say something about Montreal.  It's large but extremely quiet - no car horns or sirens.  It's progressive in some things, especially bicycles which are all over the place.  But in other things it's quite retro, like smoking.  And try to find a vegetarian meal in this town ... you'll just starve, unless you can live on Tim Horton's donuts.  (Once upon a time, I could).  It's a port city, but the port section is the most elegant part.  It has a big mountain in the center, Mount Royale which the city is named after.  (The picture is taken from there).  Kids are yelling in French, which destroys the language's romanticism.    It's not as snooty as Paris, but it evokes that feeling.

Oh and one more thing ... their walk signals are weird. I mean look at that. No one walks upright like that - you always bend a little bit forward so as to cash in on the momentum. And what's his right arm doing? Reaching for something? If so, why not just lean into it? It is not an accurate depiction of how the natives stroll in Montreal.

On our last day, Amy and I saw an IMAX movie at the Montreal Science Center ... Montreal being the city where IMAX was invented. I had never seen one before. It was a bit in-my-face, but pretty cool.

Our last Montreal meal was at Jardin Nelson, which was cool because it was not really a building.  There was no roof  - only the facade of a building (which you can't tear down in Vieux Montreal for historical reasons) with little upside down umbrellas to keep the rain off.  Plants grew everywhere.  We had crepes - mine with duck, and Amy's with rabbit.  A jazz band played.  Very French indeed.  A nice way to cap off the whirlwind tour.

On to Quebec City next!