Neither of us had had much contact with Canada or Canadians, and certainly not “les Montréalais,” so we were very excited and eager to meet them and appreciate their culture and learn a little something from their history... All until some idiot Québéquois totally cut us off and cut in line for the boarder crossing… Well, Bonjour to you, mon cher ami!
Other shallow impressions the Canadians and Montréalais left us with:
1.their money resembles Monopoly money
2.who names their coins??
3.Canadians have no concept of infrastructure (awful roads and lack of signs)
4.numerous spelling errors in both French and English
But overall, we had a very pleasant stay, and we were sad to leave a city we truly fell in love with.
We found our campsite and set up our tent. We stayed 30 miles south of the city at a KOA campground. We’re not members, and we usually hear good things about this chain of campgrounds, but this one was terrible: it was like camping in one bit open field with only a post number and a wooden guardrail to separate you from neighbors! No privacy and very few trees, a dumb pan that was supposed to be a fire pit, but OK bathrooms and showers (still, don’t stay there).
The rest of the day we spent in the city (thanks to a 3 day metro pass) and we walked and walked til our legs could hold us no more.
One thing Montreal is famous for is “Poutine,” which is simply french fries with cheese curds and gravy on top! Matt ordered it right away—that’s all he’d been thinking about since we started the car that day! He devoured it while I enjoyed a yummy fresh salad with lots of veggies!
We saw Place Jacques Cartier, lots of artists, boutiques, restaurants, cafés (just like France!!) the old city, the old port, and the Cathédrale de Notre Dame.
One store was called “La Table Ronde” (the round table) and inside were things straight out of the movie “Lord of the Rings” or something like that. It was so, so strange: goth-like clothes, dragons, fairies, the color black, swords, chess sets, leather, skulls, chains, etc… We didn’t have the guts to take pictures inside, but we certainly wanted to. Here’s simply the outside:
Also, I spotted a dog walker who had somewhere between 8 to 12 dogs on leashes. UNbelievable.
For dinner, we checked out Chinatown and ate food that really hit the spot. Matt had chow mein with veggies and I had chicken curry. We had to share a table that night because the restaurant was so popular and crowded, so we made friends with three Columbian girls who were living in Montreal to learn French (we told them it wasn’t real French). They were fun. Our other table neighbors were a French-Canadian couple. He (Canadian) told us that there were parts of Québec where he even couldn’t understand the language. Yikes!
That evening, we slowly made our way back to our campsite, completely wiped out, but content. We didn’t make campfires over the week because of the cloudy and unpredictable weather, and because the fire pit was a joke and wood was too expensive. Thankfully, we weren’t too cold anyway.
We had neighbors that night: some young couple who had a fire going and were drinking. They had their car on because they were listening to French rap on their radio. Ugh! Turn OFF the music!! You’re in nature!! ENJOY IT!! Sigh. So, over the next 1.5 hours, we tried in vain to fall asleep. Finally, we got so irritated at our neighbors that we decided to move campsites. It had started raining, so the whole ordeal was a mess. Somewhere in there I uttered a whiny “I hate Canada” to which Matt rolled his eyes as I continued to huff and puff with my arms crossed. We set the tent back up (with mosquitoes biting us and the rain continuing) and finally slept in peace and quiet. We stayed there for the rest of the week.
Hope those neighbors didn't stay there the rest of the week too! Mom
ReplyDeleteActually, they didn't, so we could've stayed there after one bad night's sleep. But, there was a terribly loud road too, so it's a good thing that we left.
ReplyDelete