Montreal day 2

2011/09/06

Today was another day of driving around with Gaëtan and Claudette to see the sights.  We got his repaired van back, and dropped my vehicle off for an oil change with his favorite mechanic.

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I got to walk by the old Olympic swimming pool, which is not far from my grandparents’ old place.  My mother and I went swimming there once or twice when we were living here.  It was a huge pool.  Not a good memory though because we’re pretty sure it was a result of going there that I got contagious warts on the soles of my feet.  Not the normal shapeless brown bumps you normally think of as warts – they were rather fascinating and complex structures that looked like little craters with four-globed lanterns in the middle.  It took almost two months of annoying skin-freezing treatment that required me to remain lying face-down for a couple of hours per day to get rid of the damned things. Thankfully that was a skin-only infection and they never returned.

We went downtown again for a somewhat rushed tour of the Montreal underground shopping mall, a couple of train stations, a ride on the Metro and three more churches and cathedrals.

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Nice places, but I still like Notre-Dame (yesterday) the best.

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Sir John, eh?

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The Metro is nice, but not as nice as I remember.  Some of the stations are more nicely decorated than the ones in Toronto, but not all of them.  The trains look nicer and are quieter because they run on rubber wheels, but they are also smaller inside and jostle around more while in motion.  I think I like the Toronto subway better.

We also went to St. Joseph’s Oratory, a place I’m told my father likes though he never mentioned it to me.  It’s friggin enormous – this may be the most cavernous indoor space I’ve ever been in, short of an indoor sports stadium (yes, I admit, I was once roped into attending a hockey game – I was young and foolish!).  It’s very nice and would make a great living room for my house, but it’s still not as pretty as Notre-Dame.

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The main event today was a trip on Mount Royal, the big hill in the middle of the city, to get some photos of the city from above.

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In the evening they took me to a church that had been sold and converted into a sort-of soup kitchen, sort-of restaurant by a nonprofit organization.  Basically you get a full meal (soup, salad, main dish, veggies, drink and dessert) for $3.  It was not bad for the price, though not my first choice cuisine either.

Gaëtan is very much a jokester and not above the occasional small prank.  Today he overheard me mentioning that living in Vancouver I miss the snow, since we don’t get much there – later on he demanded I close my eyes and hold out my hands, and put a large snowball in them – shaved ice from an indoor hockey rink.  That was a surprise.  Naturally I threw the snowball at him.

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Montreal day 1

2011/09/05

Today Gaëtan and Claudette gave me a driving and walking tour of some of the scenic parts of Montreal.  We started out with a drive-by of my grandparents’ old house on Rue Sicard, which is where my mother and I lived with them for a month or two one winter.

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The place has been partially renovated at the front but is much the same as then. When we were there, we stayed in the room at the back behind all the stairs.  Aunt Winnie and cousins Tanya and Angela Rose lived upstairs, their place reached by the (treacherous in winter) outside front steps or a very tiny, cramped spiral staircase at the back – typical for old Montreal houses.

Next we headed over to Ile Sainte-Helene to look at the giant Buckyball left over from Expo 67:

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Lovely piece of architecture, that dome.  We also were going to go to the fairground called La Ronde, which occupies half the island, but the parking, admission etc fees came to about $75 so we decided to skip that.

Next stop was the nearby casino, which it turns out is also a leftover Expo building. It’s a huge casino – mind, I’ve never been in one before so I have nothing to compare it against. I wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside, unfortunately, but it was very nicely decorated and there must have been nearly a thousand various kinds of slot machines in there.  They also had poker, blackjack, baccarat and roulette areas.  I saw people laying down rows of hundred-dollar bills on some of those tables.  The slot machines ranged from two cents to two dollars per play.

The casino experience set my mind working in two directions.

The first is that my aunt and I observed that most of the people playing the slots didn’t seem happy.  Many of them were very old and were in there blowing their pension checks; others were spending their welfare checks.  They were sitting there pressing buttons and receiving bad news, but they kept pressing the buttons all afternoon.  They reminded me of lab rodents pressing a bar for food pellets, except in this case they rarely received a reward for their actions. Honestly, people.  Go sit in a park. Read a book, develop some artistic skills – all cheaper and more rewarding ways to spend time.

The second thought is how nice it would be if this were an arcade.  The place was full of shiny machines with video screens and bright, colorful flashing lights. I’m not kidding that there were hundreds and hundreds of them.  It looked very much like an upscale arcade, yet sadly there weren’t any fun games; just machines that ate cash and hope without providing any but the very rarest excitement. Ripoff and waste of space combined.  But I sure would like to build an arcade that looked like this.

 

We then went and drove by the third remaining Expo building, Habitat 67.  It’s still in pretty good shape and fully populated with tenants.  It was considered ugly when it was built, but up close it’s actually not so bad – I wouldn’t mind living in it.

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Then we parked downtown and walked around Old Montreal for a while, looking at the old and well-decorated stone buildings. I had my smoked meat sandwich – not from Schwartz’s as planned, but it was still pretty good.

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I think this is the McDonald’s where my mother bought me my first Chicken McNuggets (just weeks after they were introduced, as I recall) with the last change in her pocket, starting a junk food craving that lasted a good twenty years:

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The highlight of the downtown trip for me was visiting Notre Dame Cathedral.  It’s nice on the outside, but inside it’s one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen.

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There are something like seven thousand pipes in this organ, and it has four keyboards plus a zillion other controls. I’ll have to beat that when I build my science-villain pipe organ:

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Check out this kinky staircase:

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On returning to Gaëtan’s van, he discovered a mechanical fault and we had to drive to the garage without power steering (I had to help steer since he’s recovering from a shoulder operation) and with failing electrics – in fact the vehicle died just as we pulled into the garage lot and stopped behind their tow truck. Very elegant; any difference in traffic or signals and we would have ended up pushing it the rest of the way or getting a tow. But on top of that, there was a priest there who asked us for directions, and he ended up handing us the keys to his car so we could drive ourselves home from the garage – he rode along to get his car back afterwards. Very generous of him.

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to Montreal

2011/09/04

Continued on from Belleville to Montreal today, with a couple of stops along the way.

First stop, the SkyDeck observation tower on Hill Island, in the midst of the Thousand Islands.  The Thousand Islands really strike my fancy because you get what looks like a nice upscale suburban neighborhood, only with a river instead of roads, and instead of freight trains you get cargo ships passing by your back yard.  Nice neighborhood if you can afford it:

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Next stop, Upper Canada Village.  My parents tell me I was here once before, but I don’t remember it.  We were on a trip to evaluate a nearby hippy commune (I vaguely remember that part) and also did a boat tour of the Thousand Islands, which I also don’t remember.

I spent two hours at the Village but could have spent more.  It’s the biggest heritage village I’ve seen in Canada so far. Lots to see. I enjoyed it a bunch.  I’ve rarely seen so much quaint packed into such a localized area.  But one thing about these heritage villages that most other people can’t say: I can honestly say I’ve lived in a place that makes these farmhouses look modern and luxurious.

Assorted Village pics follow.

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Concluded the day by driving into Montreal and meeting up with my aunt Claudette and her boyfriend Gaëtan.  I haven’t seen Claudette since the last time I was in Montreal, in 1985.  Gaëtan is a new meet.

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Niagara Falls

2011/09/02

Spent the day doing touristy things in Niagara Falls today.  I’ve been here twice before, as far as I know.  Once as a toddler (I’m told almost fell in because of the hypnotic effect of the falling water) and once in my early teens.

I remember being impressed by the bright neon lights of the tourist strip, and they light up the falls at night, so I went out twice – once in day and once at night.

Amusing building design: tipped over skyscraper

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I also went up on the big ferris wheel they have overlooking the river. Here you can see the rivers leading to the falls – a feature often overlooked:

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I went on the Maid of the Mist boat tour.  It’s a short boat ride that takes you near the American falls and right up beside the Canadian falls.  The spray is incredible.  They give you a disposable raincoat, but you’ll still get soaked.  It was almost hard to breathe there was so much water flying through the air – like being under a dozen showerheads at once.  Luckily my camera bag proved itself quite waterproof, but needless to say I didn’t take any pictures that close to the falls.  This is when I had to put my camera away:

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I did get this panorama of the American falls on the return leg:

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The next place I went was Table Rock, which is the name of the best vantage point above the Canadian falls – and where a young woman recently fell in. This compressed panorama doesn’t do it justice – there’s a lot of water there. It’s about 20cm deep where it goes over the edge, and moving fast.

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Just below here is an attraction called Journey Behind the Falls. There are three parts to it. Two are tunnels that come out behind the significant overhand of the falls. You can’t get right to the tunnel mouths though – what you see is this:

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That whiteness is the wall of water falling down.  Sometimes the wind blows some spray into the tunnels.

The third part is an observation deck near the foot of the falls.  Lots of spray here too, but I was able to get a more dramatic angle:

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On the return trip, at the request of my friend Liam, I photographed the monument to Nicola Tesla, world’s greatest mad scientist.

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That’s the documentary view, but I like this angle better since Tesla was inspired as a child to want to harness the power of the Niagara Falls:

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You’ll note he’s standing on a partial model of the AC motor, one of his world-changing contributions.

I’m not much interested in the wax museum type stuff that dominates the tourist strip here, but I did go into Brick City, hoping for a Lego extravaganza.  Also I had heard the Lego model of the CN Tower that is no longer at the CN Tower was moved here.

Unfortunately it was a disappointment.  What you see here is everything:

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Basically a moderately substantial Lego collection for a single person.  The CN Tower model is not the original, and is not as well done.  Lots of trains, and some nice constructions, but also a lot of “canned” stuff – ie off-the-shelf Lego sets that have simply been assembled and added to the mix.  Overall this exhibit is less substantial than the touring Lego shows that used to go to department stores across the country.

When I was here as a teenager, there was a big arcade on the strip where I and three other kids spent a crazy amount of money playing Gauntlet II.  That arcade is gone and I’m not certain of where it was exactly.  There are four new establishments that have (a poor selection of) arcade games, but they more correctly identify themselves as midways:

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More shots from the strip:

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OMG, there are dinosaurs and the like after those mini-golfers!

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A couple of moon compositions:

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Night shots of the lights illuminating the falls, and their effect on the cloud of spray:

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Night shots of the falls:

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A bit blurry, but there was a horse-drawn carriage lit with Christmas lights that I thought was neat:

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They also had fireworks over the falls tonight, but I was up on the ferris wheel at the time and there was too much internal reflection in the gondola windows to get good shots.

I had a good time, but I don’t think I need to return anytime soon.  If you do come here, the Maid, the Behind observation deck and the ferris wheel are all highly recommended.  You can get multi-venue passes to save a few bucks and there are also coupons to be had everywhere.

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Toronto day 7

2011/08/31

Today had three things in it: Shopping, the ROM and one last dinner with Nav.

Shopping

Remember all those stores I was reminiscing about the other day? I revisited a bunch of them today, without my camera bag so I could go inside.

I’m happy to report that the World’s Biggest Bookstore is still pretty good – it hasn’t degenerated into a gift card store like Chapters has.  Still two large floors packed with books, books, books.  It definitely is one of the biggest brick-and-mortar new-book stores in Canada still.

The Silver Snail is also still excellent.  They’ve got a good selection of new and old comics and action figures, but the real highlight is the busts and statues they have on display – very expensive, but amazing.  There were several variations on life-size Alien heads, a cutaway Millennium Falcon to scale with the old Star Wars action figures (of which they had many for sale), and best of all, some of Dr. Grordbort`s steampunk rayguns.

Active Surplus is not as diminished as I had thought.  They no longer have a storefront, but what they do have is stairs leading to a second-floor store that is still at least two thirds the size of what they used to have.  Plus it`s much better organized, so they may actually have more stock now – and they also have a second location now on top of it.  This store is an electronic nerd`s dream.  I grabbed a basket and walked every aisle, tossing anything that looked interesting in my basket.  I ended up spending well over $100 on random interesting junk, and could easily have spent more had I more time.

I went to check out Toby`s Famous Eatery, one of three restaurants claiming to inherit the mantle of my old favorite, Toby`s Good Eats. As a test, I had their Buster Brownie – the classic hot fudge brownie with ice cream dessert I love so much.  It was good, but nowhere near as good as it used to be.

I was going to go check out Bakka Books as well, but time was getting short so I skipped it.

The Royal Ontario Museum

I`ve always loved the old stone building that houses the ROM. I was distressed to learn they have grown this ugly crystalline cancer on the north side of the building:

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But thankfully they didn`t remove any of the old building – it`s all still there, including the old entrance on the east side:

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Due to time constraints, I concentrated on the two most interesting exhibits – paleontology and minerology, but also took a quick pass through the rest.  Assorted photos follow.

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the paleo exhibit is really something – it gives a dramatic reminder of just how big some of these extinct critters really were.

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Interesting headgear:

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Armadillo the size of a VW bug:

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Meow:

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Check out these amethyst geodes. The first one is more than six feet tall.  I`ve always dreamed of finding a geode, but finding something like this would be mindblowing:

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Slice from the largest black mica crystal ever found – three meters by two meters (can`t recall the original thickness):

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I like this art deco clock. Must make something like this:

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Dinner

Got together with Navtej one last time, and he took me to his favorite Indian buffet – the Tandoori Flame in Brampton.  It was great.  The food was at least as good as my favorite Indian place out west, and there was a much greater selection here.  I tried a bunch of new things.  Nav made me try their white pumpkin desert – it looks like an ice cube. Unbelievably sweet – I couldn`t finish a single bite without setting off my coma alert warnings.  I don`t think I have ever tasted anything so sugary – not even pure sugar or honey comes close.

Back on the road tomorrow. I`ve had a nice break from driving and am ready to resume my journey now, and I`ve done everything I wanted to do in Toronto.

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