Quebec - May 2012

Quebec 2012

Wednesday 23rd - I had views of Des Moines and Chicago on our flight to Washington Dulles, where thunderstorms hit while I was in transit. My plan to arrive in time for Joannie to pick me up after work started to unravel as the tarmac filled with planes that had landed but were waiting for gates to become available, while no planes were taking off. Our Bombardier jet set off over an hour late, and on landing a bunch of flustered passengers sprinted in vain for their connection to Paris. Meantime, I waited in vain for my luggage. Baggage Services had a small but quite angry mob to deal with in multiple languages; I was busy trying to remember the colour of my case, getting into the wrong 'missing bag' immigration queue and messaging Joannie who was parked outside. I must remember to ask for the free toiletries showbag next time.

It was brilliant to see Joannie again! Hard to believe it'd been 10 years. We dropped past her downtown apartment and then went out for a late dinner, of smoked meat(!), at Schwartz's. As we finished I had my first view of what would be a theme for my stay - there were nightly protest marches that had been taking place for several weeks and gaining momentum. It'd been dubbed 'Casserole Protest' as the marchers were making themselves heard by bashing pots & pans. There were lots of students and even families, and they would criss-cross the city each evening, noisy but mostly well behaved.

From Quebec 2012

Thursday - I had a good sleep-in, and was happy to get the message that my luggage had arrived & would be delivered that afternoon. I had a quick look around the neighbourhood & successfully managed to buy some lunch - I think I managed some hesitant French. I got a message from Joannie that there was a courier downstairs with my bag - I was expecting a FedEx van or similar but couldn't see anything... just a guy speaking French into his mobile. After a couple of minutes I asked him if he was the courier, and he said that he didn't speak much English - but yes. Instead of a van he just had a small sedan with bags through the back seat. It was great to clean up! Finally I felt presentable enough to go out sightseeing, and I headed down to the Old Port and before I knew it I found myself on Le Bateau Mouche cruise out around the old port and a short distance up & down the St Lawrence River - amazing to see such huge ships so far inland! It's a very broad river but didn't seem too deep - it had patches of rapids and lots of locks. It was a great way to view the city and enjoy the unexpectedly summery temperatures - most of the week it was around 30deg during the day and t-shirt weather in the evenings.

Joannie had given me an Opus card and in the evening we went to Mont Royal for a drink and dinner with a few of her friends which was great fun!

From Quebec 2012

Friday - I walked to the main tourism office in Dorchester Square and made it just in time to catch the city tour bus. I always find that these are a great way to get your bearings in a new city, but almost always have very annoying fellow passengers and guides. Our guide this time was very good but the trip was slightly marred when one passenger insisted on saving the last spare seat for her partner downstairs just in case he wanted to come up, despite another group needing one last seat - it got a little heated and a bit racist. The tour was reasonable (though I think Melbourne's free bus and tram tours compare very favourably compared to Montreal's $51 plus tips) and took us to most of the main sights around the city and the mountain. It also managed to get stuck for about 10 minutes by a goods train in the docks - the driver eventually U-turned and bypassed the blockage.

At lunch and a big weird guy sat down opposite me and started to quiz me about my meal but eventually he wandered off. I went back to the tourist office & started to map out the rest of my week, and then took a train to the Olympic Park. There were great views from stadium tower lookout and I took the Stadium Tour which was very good. The tour took us through the pool complex and I'm pretty sure that many of the Canadian Aquatic Olympic team's athletes were in final preparations for London 2012. (I was also impressed that they gave me a refund when the vending machine took my money.)

While I'd been staying Joannie had shown considerable interest in my ukulele and on impulse I thought it'd be nice to buy her a basic Mahalo as a thank-you present - she immediately took to it & asked me to start teaching her how to play it - fantastic! She mentioned she'd had a dream where I'd given her a uke - weird!

That night Joannie took me out to enjoy another Montreal delicacy - Poutine (describing it as fries with cheese, toppings and gravy is a start, but doesn't do it justice) at La Banquise. When we were heading back to the station, a summer storm hit - a sudden torrential downpour - we tried to shelter in doorways but still got drenched during the initial 10-minute burst; every time there was a brief respite we dashed to the next visible awning or alcove (the protesters continued on through the deluge). I was soaked through by the time we got back to the station after half an hour or so.

From Quebec 2012

Saturday - Joannie had booked us in for a morning at Arbraska zipline park with a social group; it was great to get out into the countryside & try our skills; we spent a sunny morning meeting the others and testing our nerve in the treetops, while the guides (dressed as fairies) buzzed around. We nursed some tired muscles over a picnic, losing and finding members of the group before turning for home (with an extra passenger). We stopped for a second lunch of fast food and then dropped by Joannie's parents' place. I had spoken to her mum on the phone when Joannie was staying in Melbourne & it was fantastic to meet her and her father, and to get to see their home - I was familiar with the address thanks to a few postcards & letters that Joannie & I had exchanged.

Back to Joannie's - and disaster! - my key to Joannie's apartment was missing. It later transpired that I'd left it at Arbraska, on reflection I'd put it with my bag during the picnic, but myself and another member of the group had picked up each other bags before realising and swapping - but the key had fallen on the ground. And then got run over by a mower, so the swipe card was destroyed. I paid for Joannie to get a replacement but there would be a few weeks' time before it arrived. (Hopefully everything's restored now!) If it was any consolation, while searching for the key in Joannie's car, I found the Blackberry phone she'd lost months earlier :-P The loss of the key wasn't a great hassle but I always hate inconveniencing a host. (I happened to turn on the radio at one point and immediately heard the story of a houseguest inadvertently burning down a family house though, so a lost key perhaps is not so bad in comparison.)

Later that evening we wandered through the nightclub district, most amused by the fashions, and through the Quartier des Spectacles district which had lots of public art set up, in particular some musical swings ("21 Balançoires").

From Quebec 2012

Sunday - We fuelled up at Canadian coffee chain institution, Tim Hortons, before heading to Les Cultures Gourmandes (multicultural festival) outside the Pointe-à-Callière museum, this year featuring Japan. This brought back lots of great memories of my previous two overseas trips. We looked over all the stalls such as martial arts and calligraphy, and enjoyed some takoyaki before watching the amazing Arashi Daiko. Having been learning taiko myself for just over a year it was great to see a performance by another group, and they were very energetic with lots of intricate choreography and drum setups requiring plenty of nifty footwork to get from one drum to the next; also they seemed to be having a fantastic time. One of the guys used a baseball-bat-sized drumstick very dextrously with lots of big wind-ups. I had a chat to them afterwards and told them about Wadaiko Rindo, they were very interested and we had a great chat.

Next, some more drumming - we went to visit the Tam Tams, a weekly drum circle at the foot of Mount Royal - It was good but I prefer taiko though! There were crowds of people (predominately hippies, at least for the day) enjoying the lawns and various activities such as recreating medieval battles using homemade cardboard & foam weaponry, and slackrope walking. Joannie & I walked on through the park up to the lookout at the Chalet, then past Beaver Lake and took a very squashy bus ride back down the mountain. We had a snack at Le Cagibi (ie, KGB) but Joannie was keen for me to try a bagel which took a little bit of hunting down. Later we stopped by an Australian pie shop, strangely enough. It was great to see all the Montreal streetscapes and visualise Joannie's stories about having to negotiate the exposed staircases in wintery conditions.

From Quebec 2012

Monday - I took a day tour to Quebec City. It was an early start, the driver was annoying (too much false charm, laughing at his own jokes at the same place in both languages, rapidfire switching of languages as if to subtitle himself, and way too many rhetorical questions) and the weather had suddenly become quite cool. We stopped for a quick orientation at the Lower Town restored historic (tourist) district and shivered through the guides' presentation. Two South Korean girls were not prepared for the cold and just as I was about to offer my extra jacket to the one that didn't have one, they slipped away from the group returning a couple of minutes later with a new souvenir windcheater. Our bus then took us to the Plains of Abraham park to take in some of the history, and views of the river which amazingly is tidal this far upstream, before we returned for lunch. The Koreans, Minam and Jimin, were kind enough to invite me to join them; they were on a rest day from their work as cabin crew for Qatar Air (I had met two of their colleagues on the Bateau Mouche) and we spent the afternoon travelling around together. After lunch our tour continued with a cruise on the Louis Jolliet to see the Montmorency Falls and then we explored the archaeology of the Saint-Louis Forts and Châteaux underneath the plaza of Le Château Frontenac (partly to get out of the wind). The hot coffee at the hotel's Starbucks went down very well and gave Minam the chance to flirt with the barista. Despite the mild annoyances, it was a fantastic day, all the better for great company & hopefully I'll get to meet my Korean friends again one day!

From Quebec 2012

Tuesday - After breakfast at the local coffee shop I took the fabulous English tour of La Basilique Notre-Dame; there were about 30 people in our group (along with our very charming guide) & I felt a bit sorry for the Francophone tourguide who only had a single person on her tour. Downstairs I went to the À la Vie, à la Mort - Life Before Death, possibly a mistake as after a while it started to creep me out just a bit... I needed to have a good wander in the sunshine afterwards to clear my head. 

I then headed back to the Pointe-à-Callière- the Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History, to see their touring Samurai exhibition which was pretty cool (particularly the swords), and their clever multimedia 3D-projection history of Montreal and the subterranean foundations. I wanted to buy some shoes and Joannie had told me to head to St Catherine Street but I headed to the wrong section and I think I ended up in a section that was packing up after a pride festival the previous weekend. I caught the train back to the area around UQAM and did some window shopping until another big storm hit which was a great opportunity to explore the extensive network subterranean shopping malls which took me all the way back to Joannie's.

That evening we dined at Mon Shing, then tried to see a movie but it was sold out, so we went for a drink at Winnie's. On the way back we cut through the Complexe Desjardins and watched as some technicians trialled the programming of intricate movements of giant drop shapes suspended from the ceiling.

From Quebec 2012

Wednesday - I reprised my visit to my favourite new coffee shop, and then took the train to Montmorency, something that I'd done every day for years back in Melbourne. There wasn't much to see there - a nice big new cavernous underground railway terminus with a bus depot above; what looks to be an industrial estate yet to be constructed; and a new university campus that was almost deserted - but I successfully ordered brunch in French and dashed off some postcards. I finally took the suggestion of the ever-present billboards (which had been designed by Joannie's ex), to attend the Star Wars Identities exhibition at Montreal Science Centre. I hadn't been too enthused about it before but it was actually pretty cool to see a lot of the costumes, props and models from the movies. The narrative behind the exhibition was a bit contrived, but not too bad. I had a quick look at the rest of the museum, which was probably enough.

It was a fantastic afternoon so I had a last walk around the docks & neighbouring parks, past Cirque du Soleil's bigtop headquarters. Then, I went to the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal's "Zoo" exhibition - modern art inspired by animals. I'd seen the signs all week and thanks to their choice of font had read it as "200". I also spent half an hour circumnavigating the building thanks to a sign that said "this door is broken, use the next one", so I looked for another entrance, but it just meant to use the directly adjacent door. I don't think I 'get' modern art, I much preferred the old film of a frequently combusting Rube Goldberg machine, and also the exhibit of kids' work. I then just had a wander around the Place des Artes - there was a music TV interview of a rap star being conducted on a terrace with a few dozen screaming kids as backdrop. I still couldn't find any shoes I liked but I was befriended by an endearing bilingual senior citizen who told me a little about the good old days.

I met up with Joannie and we headed off to Parc la Fontaine to meet up with the Ukulélé Club de Montréal. My uke radar started to kick in and when I saw a group of people on the lawn I knew it was them before I could clearly see or hear them. We spent a sunny evening rehearsing their favourite songs such as "Le Lion Est Mort Ce Soir" in front of bemused passers-by - lots of double-takes, they had some fantastic players and heaps of beginners. It was predominantly conducted in French which I was managing sufficiently well by this stage. As it got dark we moved to a picnic shelter and had an open mic session (without a mic) and I redeemed my efforts from earlier in the trip by playing Reboot faultlessly. It was fantastic to meet everyone & compare notes and swap some merchandise.

Thursday - I was thrilled that not only did Joannie wake up to see me off, but accompanied me to the bus stop for the 5:40am Bus 747. Farewell Joannie & I hope it's not as long before we meet again! Before I knew it I was descending over Florida, there seem to be heaps of airports everywhere I looked, fingers crossed that the pilot could find the right one!

Impressions of Montreal: I was surprised to see IGA Supermarkets - turns out IGA started in North America. Someone should buy everyone in Montreal a compass - streets designated eg 'North' are closer to 'West'. It was great to see, hear and speak some French, I was able to remember or figure out quite a lot (eg echafaud for scaffold).