Mardi en Montreal

Oh Mardi Gras.

A 6:55am train saw us rise at 5am to catch our train. Supposedly, we were supposed to check in a half an hour early to check our baggage BUT only certain trains allow you to check baggage. Apparently, our train is carry-on only. So we hobo'd it out at the gate until it was time to board.

The train ride was long and we made about 8 stops. I realized, very quickly, that the Ontario-Quebec countryside was not very different from Alberta's. In fact, heading out of Toronto, you feel as though you are driving down Yellowhead Trail, following train tracks and looking at factories and cranes. Signs of development and signs of stagnation. It's all the same. And the bloody snow. By the time we hit Oshawa, it was blowing snow in all directions. We were delayed at the Ont-Que border because we had to wait for a CN train to clear for us to cross. We arrived an hour late at Le Gare Central. A taxi took us from the station to our hostel, L'Alexandrie. The French hostel was a bit more ... rustic? than the Toronto one. But the people were far more open. Our host pointed us to the best shopping in Montreal. Rues St. Catherine, St. Denis, and St. Laurent. We were armed with maps and a key, so we headed out for Old Montreal.

The Metro took us from Berri-Uqam, just around the corner from our hostel, to Place Des Armes, where we walked our first icy, windy hill to Basilica Notre-Dame. What a sight. $5 to get in. So ... what a sight from the outside. There were plenty of postcards to see the inside anyway. Who wants to pay to go to church? We walked the cobblestone streets to find most of the interesting stores closed. The perfumerie. The Marguerite de Bourgeoys Museum. There was a man carving an ice slide that ran down Rue Jacques Cartier down into Place Jacque Cartier, down a sloping hill that levelled out by the St. Lawrence. (Montreal is an island, you know. I didn't.) We watched until we were cold, which wasn't long, then continued to look for interesting places. As scenic as Vieux Montreal was, none of the interesting shops were open. Nobody was on the icy, blustery streets. The city throws gravel over the new ice in hopes of providing its unsuspecting citizens with more traction, but the gravel just sinks into the water and becomes immortalized in ice. Ca c'est Montreal.

We stopped at a small cafe, Cafe Presse, for chai lattes and a snack. The lattes had two teabags in them! Then, we tried shopping on the streets that everybody had suggested. Always go south for the ritzy areas, right? We found sex shops, strip clubs, pawn shops, and other seedy things on all the streets that we saw. The coolest find was a small, cramped shop on St. Denis where we bought mittens, hats, and scarves. The saleswoman was a petite blond woman who spoke English super well and told us to try St. Laurent. No such luck. What were people always raving about? The shopping was thoroughly disappointing.

We proceeded to map out a route to get to the University of Montreal. Sable had a friend, Erica, that was performing in an open rehearsal for Die Fledermaus, an opera. This meant returning to Berri Uquam, transferring to a line that would take us to Jean-Talon, then transferring again and getting off at Edouard Montpetit. We figured that the University of Montreal would surely have some swanky cafes or places for students to eat.

THERE IS NO FOOD ON THE UNIVERSITE DE MONREAL CAMPUS. NONE. Nada. Nil. Nunca. Like, we walked for ten blocks up Edouard Montpetit and found nothing. We asked locals, and they said at the very end of Edouard Montpetit, there were a few not-so-nice cafes. We searched their buildings. We found that EVERYTHING in Montreal is on a steep incline and requires more than normal effort to get to regular, uninteresting places. There is a stairway to heaven with no stairs in the building adjacent to the Metro station. It's like the longest treadmill in the world. Even just standing on it requires the use of your obliques. It's ridiculous. It took us up to nowhere. We walked around, hungry, until we found their phys ed. and rec building, where we bought a chocolate milk and waited for the opera to begin.

The hill up to the Claire-Champlain Room where the opera was taking place was one of the hardest hills I have ever climbed. We scaled that hill, then realized that the building was on a hill atop the hill we just climbed. My quads and lungs were burning as we reached the entrance. My face had lost sensation. It was horrible.

But the opera was lovely! Sable's friends are so talented!! I wish that I could sing so lovely and so on key. The constumes were fabulous, the set was well-designed. The only thing that would have been nice is if the actual acting part was translated to English in subtitles. I don't get every french joke. But, I understood the majority, so it was okay. We met Erica after the show, took pictures, then headed home.

I was hungry. Starving. Ravenous. We contemplated ordering-in. Just as I had picked up the phone, Jack Black asked me why I hadn't gone for poutine. Well, not literally. But he looked like Jack Black and he was just as cool, if not cooler. He showed me a map to La Banquise, a 24h poutine place that served 22 varieties of poutine. His only advice was,"Get the small if you are not to be hungry so much." Will do. Sable and I did the 15 minute trek UP THE HILL. How is it that this city has so many hills? Are they just a continuous series of hills that build on each other? The cold was nearly unbearable. But the poutine was well worth it. I bought Poutine Matty, which consisted of bacon, green peppers, onions, and mushrooms on poutine. Sable had pizza poutine, with pepperoni, green peppers, and mushrooms. We were sated and we headed back.

Downhill, by the way, is almost worse than uphill. You feel as though you might slip on their useless gravel-ice walkways and die, sliding forever down this hill-city. But we made it back in one piece, to find the showers are never free, and we went to bed at about 2am. Sweet, sweet bed.