Some things I remembered on the way to going somewhere else

First off. During my blog about turning thirty I often put on the song that seemed to define that year for me. I have no earthly clue how this song wasn't on that list. So, now, a few months late, here is the incomparable, (at least in the late nineties) Dave Matthews:



Oh to be a sophomore in high school again. Oh wait, it wasn't that fun. Other than singing along to Whitney Houston's I will Always Love You on the way back from a basketball tournament it wasn't all that great.

On our third day in Montreal the weather decided to simulate the fourth circle of hell. Note: S asked me at some point during the trip to stop comparing various things, (annoyingly Disney-like alpine villages, weather, neighborhoods) to circles of hell. Thus, we tore out into the Montreal heat ready to set the world on fire. This took place after we shared our breakfast with our fake French British compatriot about how great off-shore drilling is and how excited we were when they ruled that the moratorium be lifted. Along with a few questions about whether Great Britain was going to be coated in oil or not. (At this B and B you all sat around a table at 8:30 together and tried to figure out what the common language was, and then, whether you actually wanted to talk or not. Luckily, we had a charming man who was French, but living in Great Britain to handle the conversation. British people are all funny and whimsical, and I wish seriously that I knew more of them because I would invite them to almost every event that I ever went to. Our friend, whatever his name was, included. He could speak French with our host then drop just as easily into discussions of Spanish politics with the couple from Barcelona. Conversation is art. Though, while watching the World Cup it was lovely to come across this little gem after the national team got destroyed by Germany.

Michael Davies-Blogger
"Americans will never completely understand how crap it is, most of the time, to be English. We might have cute accents and be good at cocktail parties. But we are mostly losers."

Anyhow, after we left the scintillating, no really, it was that good, conversation of our British friend we traveled via bus towards the old Olympic Stadium. The stadium isn't exactly popular with the locals who, even now, decades later, still mention how damn much the thing cost. Luckily, when we arrived, we noted that the large stadium and parking lot, (here deliver an ode to 1970's architecture, apply tons of cement liberally) were being used by roughly five people. But hey, it looks pretty neat from the hot ass cement.

However, we were not interested in being touristy and going to the Olympic Stadium. No my friends, we wanted to be touristy at the biodome. (When we told one couple from the Northeast that we were going to the Biodome he said, "Oh yes, we've been to the bee-oh dome." I mean, is that really the world you're going to accent in French? Biodome? Anyhow, I had many fantasies about the Biodome before our arrival in Montreal, tromping around with penguins one minute then moving on to the large forests and riding a moose while my wife took pictures/swooned in the background. I can honestly say that none of my expectations were exceeded. Why? Because the bee-oh dome, pretentious prick, was closed for a strike. How people are on strike at what appears to me to be a sort of innovative science museum is beyond me. I expect this sort of behavior from American athletes making fifteen million a year, but I am highly disappointed to find it in places where they love gravy fries and elk. These guys can take harsh winter after harsh winter, but they can't take 10.50 an hour?

At this point I told S that our trip was ruined and that the Biodome was what I'd been looking forward to the most. I don't actually know if that's true, but as I didn't get to experience it I'm fairly certain that it would have been life changing. Every experience that I've almost had could have always been life changing. Imagine the poutine at La Banquise? It probably would have been like eating a little piece of heaven with gravy on it. Mmmmmm. Heaven.

S tried to coax me into walking to a local market because she values local markets like other women value shopping. Forget a new handbag, this woman wants to check out the texture of your in season strawberries and find out how many Kilometers they had to travel to get to the market. Which, Kilometers are awesome because I constantly think of them as miles and when it says 80 to something, and we get there in under an hour, I'm really excited about the time I made. Rationality be damned. Anyhow, S and I did some death hike to the market through broken down neighborhoods with me helpfully asking her if she preferred the trash on the street here or the nice restaurants around Mont-Royal. I was never asked to shut up but the sentiment certainly went in that direction.

At the market we walked by everything once before buying anything. S always has to look everything over, even if the market spans two blocks before she picks something out. Why? Is it some need to make sure to get the best? To really explore all the opportunities? No. It is to drive me insane. I am briefly pacified with maple fudge but the damn thing is gone too quickly to curb my impatience. We wander around for a while looking for strawberries and finally, when we come across the best basket of strawberries in the entire world we purchase them.

After this, we took an exceedingly long walk down those same crappy trash strewn streets back to the Olympic Stadium area. Why? To go to the Botanic Gardens. Botanic Gardens are the sort of thing you go to when you've been married for seven years or when you have kids? In between you wonder why someone would ever spend their time looking at Maples instead of having fun.

The garden is fun, especially the shady part. I am able to identify one tree on the hour walk.
M: That's an evergreen.

S: It's a blue spruce.

Luckily a blue spruce has blue needles, so I might actually be able to identify it again. After winding up our tour of the gardens we did what any couple on fire for life and ready to experience it, seize the day if you will, we took a three hour hot nap at our hotel. So really, it was like an hour nap because hot naps always involve lots of rolling around and waking up and general feelings of ill will towards any sort of skin touching in the slightest.

Then we ate at our second vegan/vegetarian restaurant of the trip because S wants our little girl to be weakened in utero, so that we don't have to be overwhelmed at first with crying.

M: Baby will be strong like bull?

S: No. No.

After dinner we wandered back to our hotel to think about napping. However, I talked S into going to a place called Juliette et Chocolat, which turned out to not be a figurative piece of heaven on earth as I described above, but the literal redeemed earth incarnate in a chocolate shop. They had dark chocolate milkshakes and desserts of every kind imaginable, overflowing with chocolate goodness. S described the restaurant as being a place that she could not have imagined better in her own mind. That in some way her conscious mind could not have created anything more splendid than the restaurant in which we were now eating our desserts. Also, it was cool. We'd been hot all day, and it was so gloriously cool. I had a dark chocolate milkshake, rich and as delightful as you would imagine it would be. S had a brownie with ice cream and hot chocolate so thick you could pour it out like syrup. And then we shared a nice when Harry Met Sally moment over how amazing our dessert was. Bravo chocolatier!

That night we rolled around in bed for hours trying to think of ways to get cool. In the end I slept upside down with a small fan resting against my cheek and blowing cool air across my forehead, while at my back the little balcony door was half-open, bringing in bits of cool air and the honks and shouts of the night. We slept terribly.