Montreal: An Eternal Party - 1

A trip by myself and I was back to my usual self where I went through some serious last-minute exercise just to make it in time to the bus. Montreal is about 700 kilometres from Waterloo. An overnight journey changing buses at Toronto, and the capital Ottawa. At Ottawa again, there was a situation. There were ten of us and only two seats left on the bus to Montreal. The next bus was about 6 hours later. That would be quite a lot of loss for a 2-day trip. Without joining the queue, I walked right up to the conductor, played the mercy card of me being a foreigner and having come all the way from India to go to Montreal, and without seeking his permission or looking back at the other passengers boarded the bus right away.

At 5am, I expected Rajarshi at the Montreal Bus Station. I didn't know whether it was too much of an expectation because we have never met before. He came about an hour later.
Our first stop was at Chez Cora, where we filled ourselves with a proper English breakfast. It was 7 and the streets still had a deserted look. From accounts of others, I guessed that the city had just gone to sleep.

We freshened up a bit at one of the MITACS students' room in the hostel. Then we set out. For starters, Montreal has a north deviated from the Geographic North by 80 degrees. I didn't find too good a reason for this other than the fact that Montreal-eans want to officially claim that they are crazy. Also this is in the state of Quebec, and has majorly a French speaking population - which possibly explains as to why the girls here are so pretty and cute. A metro ride took us to the Parc Olympique and the Biodome. We walked around the place, but didn't go for any guided tour. There was an adjoining Insectarium and Jardin Botanique (I love the sound of French when pronounced in English) We gave all of this a miss, because these are present in all major cities around the world. What we were looking for is a different kind of experience.

Biodome (previously Olympic Velodrome)

Practice underway for some stage performance

Montreal is named after the central hill in the city called Mont Royal. This was our next destination. We walked the streets, entered random shops, tried out random stuff, and then after a steep hike finally reached a viewing point, from where we could see the whole city. We made our way down by a different direction. On the map there was a huge 3 sq.km. graveyard to the West (yes, Montreal West) of Mount Royal. When asking for directions to it, a shopkeeper seriously told us not to go inside, as it is very easy to get lost. It made us all the more eager to go in. Might have been a fun idea to get lost, but with me around, that is kind of difficult. Besides we didn't go in to the core.

The tomb waiting for the living to come join the rest of the family

I have heard of the French delicacy of raw oysters, and have seen people have that in Paris. At Jean Talon Marche (Market), I tried it. All it took was a verbal assurance that it won't make me sick. I slurped it at one go, and couldn't dwell on the taste too much, but it is not anywhere close to repulsive irrespective of how it looks.

Slurp it at one go

A double lunch of Fish and Fries, and later Shawarma at a Lebanese place replenished us. In the river to the East, there is a large island (For that matter even Montreal itself is one huge island, with the river forking out and rejoining). It seemed like all of Montreal had come here to party at this Sainte Helene Ile. There were public shows, and lots of people. The island is also famous for the casino, and for the F1 race track which hosted the Montreal Grand Prix just a few days ago. We walked along a long section of the track, saw the race starting point, the pits. The road quality itself was nothing special. Seemed pretty normal with a few cracks here and there.

We returned back to the main island, and on the Street, we found people lined up, waiting for a procession to come. I was eager to see one in foreign land, but this turned out to be a Fashion Parade, whatever that means. What I saw, was a bunch of weirdos in weird outfits, doing weird stuff and passing us by. There were people on stilts, huge chariot like things, lots of dancing... as random as one could think. Brought to you by Jean Paul Gautier.

Around every corner of the street something or the other was going on - be it some band performing, or some kind of an exhibition, or some open air dance lessons going on.
After a Tim Horton's break, we continued to Old Montreal. By now it was getting dark. The cobbled streets with archaic looking buildings and churches on either side all in the dim yellow street light gave the place a definite charm. Around one corner we saw a video shooting taking place with some artists behaving or posing in strange ways. By now, Rajarshi and I had learnt better to accept things the way they are in this city and not to give in to our instinct of questioning logic behind everything.


We walked on till we reached the port. Lots of expensive boats and liners. And there were so many people all around, it reminded me of the Kolkata book fair. The crowd built up further until finally the fireworks started. Today was Australia's turn and of the 8 countries in the finals of the fireworks competition, going by public opinion, today's was the best.

Some more walk, some more shops, gyros for dinner, and then finally back to the hostel at 2 am. The hosts were very kind. They offered me Absinthe (69% alc.) in the manner prescribed with the sugar cube and all the rituals, and then I called it a day.