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