... that some of the doors in my house have expanded and now stick in their frames. I now live in constant fear of becoming trapped in the washroom until winter, eeking out a living by eating toiletries.
... that I'm holding a piece of frozen chicken near my forehead and watching the fog roll off. The chicken is for dinner. I might cook it first.
At first, I was hoping to get away with writing up this travelogue a month after the fact; none of you are here, so who's to know when I actually go places? You can't even be sure that I'm wearing pants right now. Then I recalled that many of you may be familiar with the date of Canada Day, and so would be suspicious. So I'm not going to pretend that any of this happened recently - it's all a dim memory of a bygone time.
Anyway, as promised... Montreal and Ottawa!
Since our foreign correspondant, Etienne, was due to return to France on July 3rd, we decided, that if there is one thing a visitor to the United States must experience, it's Canada Day in Ottawa! After some convincing ("Don't worry, the INS is sure to let you back in, even though your visa expires on July 1st. They love French people."), Etienne was brought onboard on the condition that we would guarantee his return to New Jersey no later than midnight, July 2nd.
Ottawa being such a popular destination, Paul also decided to join us. This is good, because among Paul's many sterling character attributes is his has-a-car-edness. We also expanded our itinerary to include a night and a day in Montreal so that Etienne could learn how to speak French properly.
For the first leg of our brief Canadian Tour, we hit Montreal. I used to live there, but my 9 word description of Montreal is: "Totally awesome, but totally wasted on a 5 year-old."
We arrived in mid-afternoon, and Paul led us to a sandwich restaurant near McGill, that he knows from when he used to live in Montreal (he was older, though). We spent some time trying to convince Etienne that our waiter (who immediately had us picked out as anglophones, and so spoke to us in English) was actually French-as-a-first-language.
After the sandwiches (totally awesome), we decided to swing by the hotel that we had booked on the "we'll tell you where the hotel is after you've booked it" system. On our way, we saw some banners for the Montreal International Jazz Festival; we wondered when it would be, and lamented the fact that we wouldn't be in town when it was on. It wasn't until we saw signs for "Jazz Festival Parking" that we clued in.
We then arrived at our hotel to discover that it was actually immediately adjacent to the festival. If you can accidentally book a Saturday night in a hotel whose pool overlooks the Montreal Jazz Festival, I heartily recommend it. Totally awesome. Before dinner, I got to see "Mountain High... Valley Low" arranged for accordian and electric zither.
We went for dinner at a bring-your-own-wine Greek restaurant, watched some jazz, and conducted an exhaustive survey of the local patios. This survey is conducted as follows in Montreal:
1. Stand on sidewalk facing street.
2. Turn left 90 degrees.
3. Walk 12 steps.
4. Turn left 90 degrees.
5. Enter patio.
6. Drink.
7. Exit patio.
8. if (time > 3h00) GOTO bed
9. GOTO 1
On Sunday, we went for brunch at a courtyard bruncherie (not an actual word) with live chamber music. Totally awesome. We checked out the Old Town, where Shin, who felt unprepared for the upcoming Canada Day festivities bought a shirt with the government style "Canada" logo. We stood around the entrance to the Old Port, trying to decide what the picketers were protesting (something to do with "The Youth of Quebec"), then went in anyway (though as a act of solidarity, we walked in as far away from the picketers as possible).
We walked over to the foot of Mount Royal to check out the tam tam, then climbed the hill and ate ice-cream. We also discovered that the furry creatures on Mount Royal are even more human-acclimated than those at UBC; there was a (fat) ground-hog that would stand up and eat food out of peoples' hands, and chipmonks that would actually climb onto people's hands to eat. On the way down, I cruelly tricked a squirrel into thinking that I had food in my hand; I hope he's learned a valuable lesson about the capriciousness of humans.
On the way back to the hotel, we caught another show at the Jazz Festival. It was a brass band from France who's show culminated in the "Quebec folksong," "Killing In The Name", performed on snare drum, marching bass-drum, trombone, guitar, and bull-horn. Totally awesome.
Loitering by the elevators in the hotel lobby while Paul checked out, I noticed that the guy with dreadlocks waiting for the elevator was none other than super-star Bobby McFerrin. I calmly and quietly indicated this to my companions ("Bobby McFerrin... The 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' guy."), but I think he overheard us; as he got on the elevator, he turned to us and said, and I quote, "Hi, guys." To us. With that out of the way, we left the city, stopping only to buy a dozen bagels at Fairmont Bagels (best bagels ever - the one thing I remember from living there).
To sum up: Montreal. Totally Awesome.