Montreal
Joie de vivre
14.08.2009
26 °C
31 July - 2 August
Going to Quebec was never part of the original plan but, when our friends from the Halong Bay tour we did in Vietnam said, “Come and see us if you’re over this way,” we thought why not? Our main flight ticket took us from Madrid to London and then to JFK so we decided to tack on one more hour and head up to Montreal. And, we’re very glad we did.
Jetlag saw us rise obscenely early on our first day in Montreal and we set out in search of waffles with real maple syrup - not the fake, flavoured rubbish that’s affordable at home. True to form we found maple-shaped syrup bottles and enormous cans of the real deal everywhere we turned. Every table in the café we visited had their own 300ml jug of sticky, tasty goodness. We tucked into our waffles piled high with fresh strawberries and I sipped the first decent cup of coffee I’d had in a long time.
A few things about our latest destination struck us straight away:
1. Average streets in Montreal appeared to be 4 lanes wide with enormous SUV style cars to match.
2. While Montreal and indeed Quebec is French-speaking, noone makes you feel like a heel for not being able to and will more than happily switch to English.
3. If someone bumps into you in the street, they apologise. After Spain, this basic courtesy was enormously appreciated. They know how to queue, how to let people past on escalators and all the usual niceties we’d been missing on the Iberian Peninsula. People in Canada are just as polite and friendly as their stereotype portrays.
4. There are NZ apples, pears and (more predictably) kiwifruit in their supermarkets.
5. Things in Montreal are expensive. Extra taxes apply to most items but is often not included in the price making for a nasty shock at the cash register. We bought a measly two bags of groceries for an horrific 60 Canadian dollars.
6. Despite what is clearly a wealthy country, there are many homeless people sleeping in doorways during inclement weather and holding subway doors open for people in exchange for money.
We spent a happy three days in Montreal shopping in beautiful shopping complexes, exploring the cafes and second bookstores in the Latin Quarter and enjoying the technical wizardry of the latest Harry Potter film in an IMAX theatre with 3D. We also visited the local squirrels. You’re not supposed to feed the squirrels, there’s a by-law, but people do it anyway. We turned up with our maple-syrup flavoured cereal leftovers to find that said squirrels were far happier eating the peanuts they’d been given earlier. They did however seem partial to raisins.
On our last day in Montreal it rained. Torrentially. For hours. This was the first real rain we’d seen in 3 months. We were walking through Chinatown when the sky really opened and we dived under an awning where a Chinese woman was selling umbrellas for $3 a pop. Taking refuge in a nearby shopping mall where a French-speaking ‘Wiggles-esque’ band entertained littlies (as it had done daily since the start of Francofolies festival), we dried out somewhat, had a snack and fled pell-mell back to our hostel.
Chinatown, Montreal
