Trip Planning...to Canada?

Do you know what sucks and isn't rewarding? Trip planning. You know what is rewarding? Travel. It's the first time I've been faced with the paradoxical nature of making travel work. Up until this point S has been the engine that has pulled the Little Caboose that wouldn't on trips to Paris and Italy. Now I'm faced with hours of determining from six small photos whether I prefer a hotel room with exposed brick and oriental rugs, or one with a small balcony that opens up over a leafy street. For some reason the travel guides I purchased really love to describe streets in Montreal as leafy. I really can't wait to see what it looks like. I'm hoping something along the lines of the rain forest, so I can get two trips in one.

Anyhow, after looking at hotel rooms for three hours or so you don't get excited about the trip, you get kind of depressed. I don't know why I ever switched duties with S, I had the great job all along, showing up at the last minute, enjoying the fruits of her labor and planning how we were going to spend our time while we were there. Huge mistake! My advice to anyone not currently attached is to marry someone organized who can plan all your trips. Then, when you get there, you can whine about not being involved in the process and feeling marginalized and such. This will in turn allow you to subtly guide the trip once it has actually started like a great ship's captain. I just didn't realize how smart I was until now.

Relatedly, if anyone has ever been to Montreal or Quebec City and has a suggestion of things to do please feel free to offer it up. I'll likely disregard it, but at least I'll feel like we have something in common the next time we talk to each other. Hell, maybe I'll even lie about doing it.

M: "Oh yeah man, that museum was great! I loved the unique forms of architecture that really seemed to compliment the art. It was mind-blowing."

P: "Huh. I recommended the circus."

M: "The tent's structure was mind-blowing is what I'm saying. And the "art," for me, was those guys swinging from trapezes. That was amazing!

P: "Are you lying about going to the circus?"

M: "Why would I ever do that to you?"

I'm also looking forward to traveling Quebec because it will give me a chance to practice my French, which I've picked up by watching the French open. I no how to say, "quiet please." I don't know why you'd need to know anything else when you're in a foreign country.

W: "What will you have for dinner sir?" Note: Convert that to Frenchy.

M: "Quiet please."

W: "I'm sorry sir!"

M: (Wave him away)

Granted I'll never get service, but I'm pretty excited about the amount of respect that I'll get from people when I keep telling them to be quiet please. Besides which, I can also use the phrase and then gesture to S's belly, intimating that the In Utero child is trying to get sleep, and that their voice is bothersome. I know that I always loved to be shushed when babies are around. Or do I hate it? Hard to remember.

I'm traveling to Canada primarily so that I can cross another country I haven't visited off my enormous list. Otherwise, why would anyone go to Canada? Sure they're good at churning out good people and pretty fine hockey players, but what else has Canada done? To be honest, I don't really know. And unless you're from Canada, I bet you don't either because the history books we grew up with as children weren't too gig on our neighbor to the north. In fact, I grew up in the eighties when were mainly concerned with Russia. Why we didn't see the similarities between Canada and Russia is really beyond me. Two giant blogs of country that are way too big on the globe because no one actually lives in the center of iceville. A strong separatist movement. Uhm. Those people who wandered over the land mass to colonize Canada were Russians. You don't get much more Communist than that. They're pretty much the same people groups. And I used to encourage my classmates to create a great deal of animosity towards that ice locked country, but really to no avail. Primarily they said things like, "Oh, I though that was just a made up country on the risk board. Kind of like Middle Earth."

Of course I say this all in jest. We all know that Canada has been the heart of the cultural and artistic revolutions that have been central to the development of our nationhood as a whole. Anyhow, I'd write some more, but I've got to go do some ice fishing and then check my trap line to see if I got any mink pelts. Those are fetching a mean price down at the general store.