geekent’s stuff’n things

Yeah, so you didn’t hear from me for a week as I went underground and incognito. After setting off the alarms at the London office on Saturday, I went for a stroll around, got lost in the Piccadilly Squarea and had LizV take me on a night tour of London after the proper pub fish’n'chips’n'peas dining experience.
Sunday I slept in (needfully and thankfully), trotting out of bed at 11am to go do a spat of shopping for a book to read on the way to the airport (to meet Aden) and pick up some things I had eye-spied a few days before (mostly region 2 DVDs which aren’t available in Canada). A quick pack-up at the hostel and a jaunt over to the hotel were needed, followed by dinner with Liz and the tube ride out to Heath Row, where I found Aden already waiting for me (apparently her flight was an hour early due to favourable tail winds).
Monday, our first proper day in London together and Aden wanted to see the London office (since we both work at the same company there was curiousity there), which was conveniently located next to the Tower Bridge and Tower of London. We toured around the Tower of London for a few hours, the first half hour with a very amusing guide, a right and proper Beefeater (Yeoman Warder) with a masterful sense of timing and delivery (as well as knowledge of his subject). From there I exposed Aden to the Pret-A-Manger for the first (but certainly not last) time. A little bug told me that McDonalds owned Pret, but turns out they have a 1/3 stake in the company, which puts me a little more at ease.
Following that, we took a walk to the Globe Theatre (sadly we were there during off-season so no Shakespeare for us) and beside that the Tate Modern. Getting our fill of history, culture and art for the day, we walked across the Millenium Bridge towards St. Paul’s Cathedral (which was under renovations, mostly cleaning, but they had a tarp up which from a distance made it look like everything was status quo). Took the tube up to Shaftesbury Ave. and ventured into Forbidden Planet, which was both dizzying for us geeks, and also a little unimpressive.
Hungry and tired, we ate at the (later disovered to be a franchise restaurant, as practically every restaurant in London seems to be a franchise of some sort) Garfunkles and ventured to the cinema to watch the awesome Korean giant monster movie “The Host” (review coming soon).
That pretty much took it out of us for the day. Sleep beconed and Tuesday was coming fast.

Yesterday was beautiful, absolutely and, apparently, atypically. This sort of dewy gloom that we have around today is from what I can tell, the norm. It’s still pretty warm, and when you’re moving it’s quite easy to build up a sweat, then catch a chill the moment you slow down.
The Tube system here impresses me immensely. You can get pretty much anywhere by Tube and with a bit of walking, in central (Zone 1) London at least. It’s great, and the signage is so intuitive and wonderful it’s almost easy. I got into the thick of the morning rush. No pokey joes around here. If you don’t have your fleet feet on, you’re bound to be trampled.
The most immediate thing you have to get used to when roaming London is the movement of traffic, both human and vehicular. You walk and drive on the left (pass right)… it’s relatively easy to get used to walking but the innate notion of looking the opposite way for traffic when you’re at a stop is hard (thankfully the streetcorners always tell you to either “look right” or “look left” (with an arrow to point for the directionally challenged… you know who you are).

Well, I’m in flippin’ London, and despite the fact that I’m ungodly jet-lagged (not for lack of trying to avoid it though) I’m feeling happy.
The Red-Eye left Toronto around 8:30 Sunday evening (EST), the 7-hour flight slated to arrive approximately 12 hours later Monday morning at 8:30 (GMT). I was pretty exhausted Sunday from a lot of running around so I’d hoped that would translate into easy sleeping on the plane. No such luck. The notoriety that planes have been garnered with is accurate, they are very difficult to sleep in.
For starters, well, the seats don’t recline much, therefore it’s hard to get your neck into position that’s comfortable to sleep in. Add to that the fact that they don’t bother to turn off the lights until 3.5 hours into the flight it’s all nastyness. But I think I could still have slept if that were the only issue, but the steward and stewardesses kept coming around offering drinks, food and Duty Free shopping (really, people, it’s seven hours, can you hold off the consuming for just that long???), and they’re not quiet about it either.
Even then, I just wear my headphones to ignore them. With the headphones on I can even ignore the babies crying (I’m surprised at how many people used their baby as their one carry-on). But the worst of it was the elderly Hindu lady sitting next to me. She was sweet and polite enough, but she has that old lady narcolepsy trait where she can fall asleep at the drop of a dime, which just had me bitter and envious, but also, she had the jimmy legs something fierce. I mean, come on… crying babies I can ignore, the jimmy legs… it was like tubulence confined to only the two seats we were in.
Oh well. I tried to sleep, ignoring “the Lake House” and “Driving Miss Daisy”, had the 6am (GMT) breakfast (they’re gggrrrross!) and awoke myself in time for the landing. Oh that landing.
I was sitting on a wing seat, and as we descended into London, the fog was uber thick, so thick in fact I couldn’t even see the wing that was right there in front of me! Yowza! Next thing I know we touch down and I still couldn’t see anything out the window. That’s a brave pilot.
Heath Row buses transported us from the plane to the terminal in stages, so it took a while. Inside, customs was rapide and my bag was waiting for me. I decided to take the tube in from the airport, but the most difficult aspect of my trip so far was figuring out how, exactly, the London Underground payment system works. I sorta had it figured (but not really) and made my way inside London…
Sweet, beautiful, sunny and warm London. I’ve been told it’s not usually like this but the forecast says it’ll be this gorgeous all week. My lucky stars. I got lost on the way to the hostel as there was construction on the street the hostel was on and their sign was removed so I couldn’t find them. I had to pop into a net cafe and hail Lizvang to talk me in. She did a great job and she’s looking fabulous, her hair has even begun to grow back.
Meanwhile, I still needed to get to work, so I’m attempting to master the tube system, which is surprisingly easier that Toronto’s (despite having about 12 times as many lines) which is in large part to plentiful signage. It’s a terriffic system, for the most part.
Work is across from the Tower Bridge in a beautiful old boathouse. It’s a gorgeous space that unfortunately is being evacuated for larger quarters in a month or two. Too bad, I like it in here. Everything is going fine so far, but I need to catch some sleep. Another four hours should do me and I’ll be time-adjusted I think.
Can’t wait to explore the city with Aden next week. She’s going to love it here.

Ahh, now officially 24 hours removed from the 4-day/3-night camping/canoeing excursion, and, well, it was pretty good. I won’t say it was outright fantastic, because I’m still not *that* big a trumpeter of the out-of-doors yet, but certainly this was one of the better fresh air experiences of my meager 30 years. I realize now that my detestation(!) of camping doesn’t actually have anything to do with camping itself, but rather the bug situation and their attraction towards me. Apparently some people emit higher carbon dioxide levels than others and that attracts the skitters and stabby-bitey things, and I’m lucky enough to be one of those people. Sure, for this time of year the skeeters were keeping out of our way until sundown but once the sky started to darken they were all over me like Homeland Security on an Arab with a pacemaker (huh?).
Anyway, Massasauga Provincial Park provided us with a three hour canoe trip out to our site, which honestly I was surprised I could do, having such a lower endurance as a result of only ever really biking or running for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. We had a nice day for doing the jaunt in, though, with overcast skies and a warm but gentle wind, we didn’t overheat or bake, and we weren’t being blown around. We did get lost though, but a minor diversion come to think of it.
My first night out I was a little freaked. Settling into nothingness always tends to do that to me. Abandoning technology and information resources for trees and tents is a hard adjustment to make, considering I spend every damn day in front of a computer. Saturday was unexpectedly beautiful, with a mostly cloudless sky for much of the morning and afternoon, but early weather forecast had called for rain so we had appropriately tarped up our site just in case. We took a trip out on the water, but the winds often forced our canoes into a dead stop, so we scuttled behind some islands and found a nice perch for a swim. It doused ups with rain Saturday evening, just after dinner, but by then we were protected and really, all was all right.
Sunday, we faced an overcast morning, but it cleared up by noon, and we went for a swim from the campsite which was bliss (although I did accidentally bake my shoulders). We got a roaring fire going for the evening which kept us entertained under a clear and starry night. By monday we were all unexpectedly up early, and we packed up and were on the water by 9:30. It was a vibrant, sunny day… beautiful weather, but not exactly perfect for being out on the exposed, open water. Our paddle back to site was much easier upon return, with nary a wind and little lake traffic, plus some muscles and joints already prepped for the journey.
While it’s not the kind of thing I want to do every weekend, a few times a year would certainly agree with me. It helps to have people who know how to pack and prepare for these kinds of trips, and being capable of letting go of your average comforts - from the internet to flush toilets - is key. In many ways though, I appreciate the effort aspect more than the settling aspect of these kinds of trips. I like the canoe ride out, I like the setting up, but it’s the calming down, sitting by a fire that I have a hard time with… perhaps it was just the bugs dive bomb attacking me that leads me to that conclusion.
Pictures

I’m back from a, quite literally, 24 hour jaunt into Guelph to visit “the other Greg”. I have some thoughts (and pictures) on the city and maybe some Carnival quality mundane stories to tell, but my stomach is a bit sour from my irreverent eating patterns and my head’s a bit achey from my irreverent eating patterns and my sleep needs a little extra 20 minute capper.

The Beach, or “Beaches” as it’s colloquially known, has until today been a mystery to me. I’ve never ventured out that far east because I didn’t think there was anything worthwhile out there to see aside from tonnes of newbuild townhomes, sand, and unswimmable water. So when Rooms decided that he wanted to take a stroll along the boardwalk and invited the usual suspects along, I was curious to see what was beyond that wall I always seem to hit, behind which Queen Streed stretches out eastward ad infinitum.
To my surprise it’s like a whole flippin other city… well, more like town… Yuppieville to be exact, but I love it. There’s all the usual gentrification suspects (a half dozen Starbucks and Second Cups, Subways and Gabbys) but there’s also the trendy boutique stores which make it seem very tourist trappish if not for the cool boutiques, shoppes, and institutional in-need-of-a-paint-job restaurants. Plus, they have a really well put together comic shoppe in Watcher Comics (2219 Queen East, I think). It’s a basement shoppe, but it’s bright, clean, the shelves are laid out so you can see the full cover of every title and it’s organized fairly well, with a friendly and outgoing shopkeep to boot.
A few Saturday afternoons in the future will need to be spent exploring the flavours of the way Queen East.

Thunder Bay is deadsville on Saturday mornings. In High Park in Toronto you’re practically tripping over dogs on the paths, while in T.Bay I ran the full path and came across maybe 5 dogs, and a dozen walkers (nobody else runs around here I see). I was in my Running Room gear (knee-length, blue shorts with a spandex liner, a vibrant orange Adidas running t-shirt, my iPod armband, and some shades) and I felt both incredibly underdressed and totally metro comparative to what everyone else was out and about in. I get the sense that if anyone is exercising in town that they’re doing it by driving to some fitness centre.
I wound up getting a little disoriented on the trails and my perfectly timed return trip took about an extra 20 minutes of cool-down period walking to get me back home. I had an odd experience though, in that the song playing during the last few minutes of my run was These Electric Lives’ “Hit The Ground Running” (which certainly helped motivate me to keep pushing on) and then when the song was over I entered into my cool-down walk, and playing was The 6ixty 8ights’ “And I Walk”. Totally not planned.
A little later I took a trip to my favourite comics shoppe downtown and after picking up 8 months (or 30lbs) of neglected comics, I decided that walking home (1/2 way is all uphill) would be a good idea. Yeah, not so much. Although I realized it only took me 40 minutes to walk it, which is insane considering it takes me 50 to walk home from work in Toronto.
I realized I used “home” there in two different contexts. I have a home in Toronto, but I also still have a home here, I guess. Hmm. When is home no longer home. I mean, my room isn’t exactly “my room” anymore (despite the closet being filled to the brim with books, comics and action figures) and I don’t keep any clothes here, nor do I have my own bicycle to ride (hence the walking and running).
Anypoop, I’m exhausted. I’ll talk about my adventures with my pops old suits tomorrow. And perhaps… pictures?

because in 5 hours I need to wake up again and catch a flight to tropical paradise —> destination=Thunder Bay. Don’t sit and stew in your envy like I know you do.
Blogging may be heavy, or it may be sparse, depending on how socially engaged/engaging I am.
Maybe the wonders of Thunder Bay will be revealed, or mayhaps all its secrets shall remain contained.
Photos galore will happen. Pussy Galore will happen only if that James Bond theme night I’ve planned pans out.
You too will be able to tour Thunder Bay vicariously through my blog.
Look what happened last time. Scintillating.
And the time before that? Well it was a Riveting five part series thing (”thing” added so that I could link all five parts there).
And let’s not forget this post about T.Bay food
Is my laundry done yet. Can I sleep now?

One of my favourite Montreal attractions is the roof puppy:

Out back, behind a Starbucks, this little Scottish Terrier and his twin run around, perhaps looking for a way down, or perhaps just to spit on the Anglos (can a Scottish Terrier also be French?… who knows)

We speculated that some dude forgot his dog’s leash and just tossed him up there while he went into the ‘bucks to grab a Tall Frappamochatinilatte and a piss, and when he comes back the dog just jumps into his arms… although how he does it with the Frappa(etc) I don’t know.

I’ve lost track of the days

We’re now three weeks out of the Montreal trip and I’ve been blogging everything out of order, and now I’ve forgotten chronology myself. I think it was the Wednesday (day 3, evening 4) that we climbed Mount Royal.
That would be it, behind the statue of… thingy there.

Often Mt. Royal will play host to a group of LARPers (Live Action Role Players). These people get all decked out in full medievil regala - chainmail, armor, swords, maces, axes - and play fight for hours on end, or until they boil themselves in their metal gear in the hot sun. There were no LARPers this day, only a bunch of school children, and I’d hardly call kicking a ball around LARPing, unless this is the hot new Football LARPing that all the kids in Britain are into these days… “I get to be poncy Beckham.”.
Toast and Metro recreated some larping for us. “FIREBALL”

As we pondered the hill, looking at the various paths, I decided upon the path least taken (well, least taken by humans, it seems to be the path water takes, erm, downwards).

Sure it doesn’t look that impressive, until you see people make their way up it.
Marmy and Linda said “Nuts to the stupid boy stuff” and took a proper path up. I scurried my way up and what I thought was a moderate pace and gave Mini-moose a look at the view while waiting for Toast and Metro.

We found a super cool clearing, and took some shots of the expansive city. Toast looks tiny, even though he’s the size of an apartment building.

For some reason there’s a giant industrial cross at the top of Mount Royal. It’s got, like, some religious significance or something. I dunno. There was a couple making out on a blanked near it, and an old lady on a bench smiling politely at us as I tried to compose a good shot of Harvey attacking the iron behemoth.

We found the proper clearing, cement platform, rest station, banquet hall, cement squirrels and all. Harvey ponders Montreal. Conclusion: is pretty.

If you thought I made getting up the hill more challenging than it should’ve been, you should have seen how I got down… backwards the whole way. I’m not certain, but I’m going to proclaim myself as the first person to ever descend Mt. Royal backwards…
As I was coming down, I fell into the pit by a derelect hobo hut. It’s very Survivorman-esque… likely abandoned over winter by the looks of the wear, but probably will be rebuilt for the summer.

Later that day: more eats

We had lunch at Cafe Santropal, which was just down the street from that statue like thing at the top of this post. I never at a moment had a single ounce of understanding as to where I was in the city for pretty much most of the trip… so don’t ask me for specifics.
Santropal had some very unique sandwich combinations (like the No. 13 - banana, honey, creame cheese and blackcurrent jam - or the Minted Ham - ham, mint, apples and cucumbers). Toast and I split our sandwiches… I ordered the Yelapa Moon (hungarian cheese, tomato and chicken with a pesto spread and sweet onions):

Toast meanwhile got the Santropol, a rich blend of roast beef, blue cheese, cream cheese, and spices.

All very filling.

Perhaps the best meal I’ve ever had

For dinner we couldn’t really decide on where to go. Linda had a few photocopied or printed off sheets with restaurant recommendations, so she let her fingers do the walking. She was back quickly and said “we’re going to Pucapuca. The man on the phone was so incredibly nice, we have to go there.”
And we did.

I think it’s safe to say that most of us can die now, having experienced true happiness there.
Pucapuca, in the Incan language of Quipus, means literally Red-red, the menu explained in its opening paragraph… yes, the menu had reading material, delightfully informative and humourous reading material. The owner of the resto is from originally deep in the Amazon basin in Peru, it informs and it details the origins of his restaurant’s name, little tidbits about his homeland, and a lot of information on Peruvian cuisine.
His menu consists of three courses plus drinks… all inclusive (except alcohol) for $15 (holy craps!).
We either started with the beef soup… (just a tad lighter fare than stew, more of a beef broth than chunks-o-beef dish… so amazing I sopped up all the broth with a fresh bun and had a near white bowl remaining).

… or the salad (which had everything from raisins and apples to sprouts and cabbage in a berry vinagarette)

I ordered the coconut chicken, which was about as tender a chicken as I’ve ever had - tap it with a fork and it falls apart - in a senses pleasing coconut sauce. The beans were absolutely heavenly. I could have cried they were so good.

We capped off the evening with desert… Queen Elizabeth Cake…
I’ve had QEC before as it’s one of my grandmother’s dessert recipes but Metro had never tried it before. Spice cake resting of a bed of dates, with a brown sugar glaze and coconut, Metro started to cry, literally, because he was so overwhelmed with flavour. Coconut and dates, ladies, if you want to win the man’s heart. Coconut and dates.
“I’m going to need to hug that man before we leave,” Metro said wiping away the tears of joy.

We were, quite literally, all in a state of food induced euphoria during our exceedingly pleasant visit to Pucapuca. Blissed out and feeling blessed, we reclined and enjoyed the rhythms pumping over the stereo, sitting otherwise in silence. We wandered the city for a little bit after that. The trip was great, but we realized that we just had the experience that made everything worthwile.
Pucapuca: 5400 St. Laurent
Go.

Okay, I’ve been putting this off for too long and things have gotten vague already. I should have kept better notes… but then, that’s what photographs are for. Of course, photographs don’t actually say a thousand words, they’re just worth that much on the currency market… thus if I have a picture and a thousand words, I’m a rich, rich man. Or someting.

Goofballs

A big part of our experience in Montreal was enjoying each other’s company for hours and hours and hours on end. The fact that we didn’t really grate on each other’s nerves at all (for the most part) was one of the most amazing things about the trip. The fact that we’re all comfortable enough to act like jackasses in public and amuse ourselves certainly helps. We had a lot of recurring jokes that would constantly make us giggle. One of them was this poor woman’s last name.

I know it’s not actually pronounced the way it looks, but “Male Parts” cropped up in our conversations more often than we’d care to admit, often as a left-field punchline. I quess the province was going through an election the week we were there, and so campaign posters were everywhere.
Quebec campaigns, primarily because of sovereignty issues, seem much more… heated or threatening than Ontario elections. Here, we know no matter who we elect, something is going to get screwed up. There, it’s like “do I want them to screw things up? Yes or no….”
Anyway, we passed by this modern art gallery one evening and there was this statue of a feminine dancer, but, guess what… MALEPARTS! In your face!

And because we’re juvenile fucking goofs, we kept giggling all week when we’d pass by the “Couche-Tard”. Hell, I still giggle about it now. It has such a better ring to it than “Macs”. It’s more fun to say at least *giggle*.
The Couche-Tards all had these oddball slushie drinks that they proudly promoted… like the Cheddar Tropical

It was actually an incredibly saccharine mango-lime type flavour… which Metro didn’t like so much…

I mean, I should have expected that it actually wouldn’t taste like cheese… but I was kind of hoping, as much as I was disgusted by the thought. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t nearly as wince-inducing detestable as Mr. Over-emoter there would have you believe. The poster adverts for the drink featured shaved mice on surfboards… mmmkay.
One of the other Couche-Tard slushie flavours was RoseBeef, which I imagine is about as close to a true Meatshake as we’ll get.

One of our favourite gags involved Toast’s demonstration of Montreal-style lap dancing. The hilarous effect isn’t really reproducable in words, but suddenly “Grindy grindy grindy grindy” became our infectious catchphrase (which to us is as great, if not better than any Seinfeld, South Park, Simpsons or Family Guy reference… not sure if it trumps our many Gir from Invader Zim punctuations [TAQUITOS!] though). “Grindy grindy grindy grindy” also became shorthand for the boys to communicate when one of the city’s plentiful attractive ladies passed by.
This brings up another observation of mine though… Montreal is a stylish town. The ladies generally look better there than they do in Toronto, mainly because it seems almost uniform in how fashionable everyone it. Unlike T.O., Montreal doesn’t seem to have as many prevailing and opposing scenes. While here we have the indies, the artsies, the hipsters, the goths, the metal head (”bangers”), the drunks, the homeless, the 905ers, the sporty, the outdoorsy (MEC shoppers), the preppy, the prissy, the businessmen and the casual, for the most part there everyone seemed to be sticking with the same style, which here would be primarily Yorkville crowd.
Here I wouldn’t even blink twice if I saw an early-90’s grunge dude pass by (it’s apparently Retro already, sigh), but in Montreal, a dude in a Che Guevara cap adorned with a sequence of safety pins stands out. Facial piercings were around, but they were moderate, so I didn’t see many of the, what we like to call, freaks of the industry… dudes and chicks with more metal in their face than in their change purse with big spacers in their ears. It just seems like people in Montreal don’t really step outside unless they’re made up. Not a lot of the jogging pants ‘n’ curlers crowd around there.
All this doesn’t make Montreal people better people, if anything the homogeny could be undesireable, but they are immediately more attractive to look at, because that’s what fashion is for afterall. Grindy grindy grindy grindy.

It’s not too beautiful enough

As the people were beautiful (well, the women at least… the guys were a mixed bag of ass and snappyness), so too was the city. New Yorkers always comment about how clean Toronto is compared to their hometown, well, equally Montreal is that much cleaner compared to my city. Perhaps it’s the fact that there’s not a lot of clutter on the sidewalk… there are no street vendors, no hotdog merchants… just pedestrians and the occasional construction barrier (a lot of construction going on there).
While Montreal may not have as much trash on its streets, at least we don’t have Raelians…

Montreal’s architecture is much more old-world. They’ve taken great pains and pride to keep the city’s historical flavour and it shows. The old buildings that are there are amazing, and the new buildings that are built tend to recede into their environment so as not to stand out too much.

But occasionally there are some new builds which just pop, and yet still fit the city, like the vibrantly multi-coloured Palais des congras de Montreal

It looks gorgeous at night, all lit up. Toronto on the other hand is just an architectural Frankenstein. It seems new builds here are meant to stand out, and they compete in how much they stand out making for a gaudy landscape. The new renovations to the ROM’s exterior are, well, nasty. You could just put a big poster of Paris Hilton out front and achieve the same effect. Crystals my ass, we’re not on Krypton. Toronto just tries too hard to be something interesting without uniformly accepting what that interesting is supposed to be or look like. Just like fashion, everyone’s trying to break out as individuals, to stand out as unique, and it’s one of the reasons I love living here. But Young & Sexy are right… the city I live in is ugly, at least compared to Montreal.
Someone likened Montreal to Boston, in terms of it’s architectural heritage. It makes me want to see Boston. Of course, I hear Boston has shit roads as well (Montreal and Quebec’s road infrastructure is in horrendous shape)

Day 3 Eats

Olive + Gourmando was literally spitting (for a champion spitter at least) distance from the hostel and was easily one of the best reasons to wake up in the morning (corn muffins with blueberries and raspberries…yes please!). Lunch was damn good too (I had a Mr. Salami sandwich and an oatmeal cookie).

A couple different salamis, goats cheese, a garlic chipotle and tomato. Yum
There was only one place I was told I *HAD* to go in Montreal to eat, and that was Schwartz’s famous Montreal Smoked Meat deli.

Schwartz’s has a reputation, and it’s reputation doesn’t live up to the actual experience. I’ve never had meat that tasted like butter before… it was insane how good this was (with a pickle on the side for $1.75)

Of course, you have to have a Black Cherry Cott with it.

After a lot more walking, we went for a heavy snack of fries and/or poutine at Frite Alors


Fries with garlic mayonnaise. Good, but I didn’t like how stubby the fries were.
Metro had special poutine

Erm… gross.

To come…

More food, Mount Royal, flowers and butterflies.

Hmm… don’t remember where I left off.
Let’s start here:

Monday: Day 2 screw you

I’m not sure I anticipated how much walking we were actually going to be doing on this trip. Oh, I knew we’d roam around the city, but I really didn’t think too much about it. As it turns out, by all approximations, we pedestrianed (new word!) our way around Montreal about 7 or 8 hours (easy) every day. I was beginning to wonder if I had brought the wrong shoes to wear as my feet were sore every evening… but you know what, no matter how bloody good your shoes are if you spend 8 non-continuous hours of movement on them your feet are going to be sore. The lucky thing was they were never sore in the morning, although they did get sore a little faster with each continuing day.
Look, feet and the Metro station floor:

We actually didn’t hit the Metro until Tuesday, if I recall correctly…

Before I continue with Day 2 (he said realizing he hadn’t even started on Day 2 yet)… let’s talk about the Metro

Montreal has a fabulous subway system, but we’re not allowed to call it “the subway” because it is, in fact, “le Metro”. I love le Metro. It makes me realize how bloody inept our own Toronto underground transport system is in comparison. It’s spread across the city better with a nice criss-crossing pattern to the lines, and it has good commuter dropoff/pickup points.
Other things I noticed were le Metro did not run on rails, but rather the “train” was on giant rubber wheels with stabilizing wheels on the side to keep it in place. Makes for a very bouncy but smooth ride. Stops a lot nicer than metal on metal anyway.
Some of the train cars are pretty noisy, considering the connecting doors between cars in many cases are grated, rather than safetyglassed in. Each car had five doors for entry, which certainly made getting off an on a lot easier than Toronto’s 3 door system, but also makes for less seating inside. We were never on the thing at peak hours, but overall it didn’t seem to be as busy as Toronto’s transit system. The stations are, generally, a lot nicer to be in, their turstiles accept their paper tickets (WOW! Neat!) and it’s a tad cheaper than what we got here. Some stations even have a countdown timer to the next train. Crazytown! That’s awesome.

The other thing about the Metro is we call Jeremy that for short (well, rather than calling him by his handle “Metrogeek”). As such, we found it fun to take pictures of him by “le Metro” signs with the “Metro arrow” pointing to him.
This is my favourite.. so superheroic:

While this, well, is less superheroic (as Metro uses the “Halte Metro”… a resting bar for the handicapable or just lazy…he was posing, I should clarify, and not really out of breath)

(The sign reads: “Cette barre d’appui est mise à la disposition de la clientèle a mobilité réduite pour lui permettre de se repose un moment.” Which means to the effect of “this bar is meant to allow mobility challenged clientele to rest for a moment”)

Day 2… part 2

We wandered around downtown Montreal. Our inner geeks took us into shopping centers, as well as a much realized need and desire for flip flops. We all had to have flip flops (for communal showering purposes… no… not communal… shared showering… what I mean is we all used the same shower… erm… we all took a shower in the same space as the other hostel patrons… sigh… but not at the same time … phew).
I managed to find “Robot Chicken” in copious supply at Istanbul … erm… Archambault (I kept on thinking “not Constantinopal. Why’d they change it, I can’t say, maybe they like it better that way?”)… it only took me going to a complete other province! We also found cute little critters Plush Microbes, on sale for about $2.50. I got Yeast for my gluten free sister, while Toast got a sore throat and Linda got athlete’s foot (to which the unathletic says “that ain’t my foot!”).
We let Linda loose on the town with her mother, and we went off madly in many directions to comic book stores (most of Montreal’s comic book shoppes are utter bollocks, but there was that one which I’ll need Toast to remind me of which had a great indie selection, a good stock of recent titles and a fine selection of European books… if I lived there I’d only go to him… he was also very nice), before winding up at the forum… once home of the Montreal Canadiens, now a desolate shopping-mall-esque place with an AMC theatre, a Future Shop, and a couple eating/coffee establishments and a few boutiques. They also have maintained a section of bleachers as a rest area/hangout spot, and a statue of the Rocket Richard (who’s biographical movie comes out this week) watches over a mock “centre ice” from the bench.

Across the way is a multi-leveled shopping mall which, I’m guessing, used to be the forum’s parking garage (I’m just making shit up now). It had a Zellers and Shoppers Drug Mart (Pharmaprix?) and was really a shopping mall proper, but really much more unique structurally than most indoor by-the-numbers consumables market.

Day 2 eating

We had a snack-lunch in the Fauxborg (which isn’t spelled that way but I spell it that way because I kept making lame jokes like “You will be assimilated…maybe… I dunno… we’re not really Borg”) which wasn’t documentation worthy. There’s a couple bakeries, a bagel shop and an assortment of non or barely franchise establishments in the food court like place that backs onto one of the city’s University campuses (I’m surprised at how little information and trivia I retain in my brain sometimes).
Dinner was a bit of a challenge, as Monday nights in Montreal are typically “chef’s night off”. We roamed around touristey Old Montreal hoping that there we could at least find a decent establishment that wouldn’t kill the budget… and we almost gave up until we found one of Montreal’s more interesting franchises, Pizzédelic. It’s an Italian-esque/Pizza joint with a really creative and diverse menu which made for a tough decision… however we were told that the kitchen would close in 15 minutes after we arrived, so our hands were forced. I don’t ever really remember what topped my pizza anymore (pancetta and basil perhaps?) but my spinach salad with walnuts, tangerine, and a creamy sauce of some kind was amazing. I had a bottle of Boris vodka/soda/ginger to drink:

Bloodrayne

Yes. We went to a movie. It was before dinner. We saw Uwe Boll’s cinematic interpretation of the jiggly vampire killer video game Bloodrayne. It was bad. Toast has an unusual fascination with the worst director on the planet and he paid for us all to go see it. I’m still not sure if was worth it. See sidebar for full(er) review

Still to come

more food… the mountain… flowers and butterflies