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leftyjewWhen last we left our heroes, they were sitting in Adam and Juli's hôtel trying to figure out how to get to their hostel. It turned out to be quite a bit more than the "only 8 blocks" we thought it was, but the path was clear enough. Our first task was to change currency (you know, so that we can pay for the hostel and dinner, etc) so as we walked out the doors of the hôtel (Brian with his leather duffel, David with his blue bookbag on one shoulder and stonewash-blue-pillowcased pillow in hand, and me with my green pillow over one arm and a blue bookbag on my bag - we had arranged to meet with Adam and Juli later that night), our first goal was a bank. We passed by one stopped inside and people said something to us in French. "Can we change money here?" asked the stupidamericans. "Go down a block and turn right onto rue Sainte-Catherine," came the heavily-accented reply. Okay, so that we did. After passing a few strip clubs advertising "legal contact dance" or "danse contact legal" depending on your language of preference, we came to a hole-in-the-wall that said they changed money. on the sign outside, it had written in large Hebrew characters, "shin-vav-mem-resh shin-bet-tav," i.e., "Shomer Shabbat." hehe pretty cool, no? anyway, so my jew brother changed our cash and we headed back toward our path. it was freeeeezing! brian didnt even have gloves, and he was stuck carrying the remains of our hard coke (we switched off after a while so he could put his hands in his pockets and avoid frostbite) but we eventually made it safely to our hostel at rue Mackay and av Overdale.
At the hostel, they were very nice and all, and we got our room with a bathroom just big enough to hold a toilet and a shower stall and still allow the door to open. notice this is still too small to allow a person inside to stand up and open the door. but it was large enough for our purposes. the room was kinda nice actually. well, not nice, but clean. Two bunk beds meaning four firmish beds that only squeaked a little and had no springs to jut into your back. Plenty of warm heat, potable water and space for bags. It was better than some places I stayed at in China for sure!
Anyway, there, i put on warmer clothes. well, more clothes, really - in sum i was wearing four socks, four shirts, one jacket, two pants, one hat, two gloves (stand up, sit down, keep moooooving...if anybody catches the reference, you win the prize), glasses and a kippah.
anyway, so we head out to see Montréal. We arrange to meet Adam and Anjuli on rue Ste-Catherine Oeste because it seems like a pretty happening spot and sorta halfway between the hôtel and hostel. After waiting forEVER, eventually, i convince Brian to call (or rather let me call) Anjuli's cel phone from his. Apparently, the two of them had been walking in the wrong direction from the start. It would take probably another half hour just to meet up again. That was too damn long to wait as it was already approaching 8 or so and we were hungry, so we decided to split up for dinner and meet later that night. The three of us saw all of Ste-Cat's (pretty much Montreal's version of Beijing's Sanlitun foreigner bar district - more on this later) and made it to Vieux Montréal (beautiful at night!) and Chinatown where we eventually ate. The menu there was so extensive! They had all sorts of dishes that i had never seen before in America or in China (they spell General Tso as General Tao), and the food was really fantastic (i had ginger lo mein. yum). And the kicker was that the fortune cookie was bilingual - French and English. It's a shame we were too hungry to wait to eat at the first place we walked into, though. There, everything smelled sooo good! It was über crowded, though, and when we walked in to wait for a table, we kinda wound up standing in between a few tables of people enjoying their dinners. The waitstaff didn't seem to like that all too much, and kinda shooed us out without shooing. Oh! And I also got something called dragon candy. It's a little candy about the size of a marshmallow. The center is peanuts and chocolate and coconut and caramel and that is covered with a wispy layer of sugar that dissolves in your mouth, kinda like cotton candy. The whole concoction was wonderful, and i bought half a dozen for 3$ (that's how they write $3) with plans to bring them back home. Needless to say, they never made it back home. I found out the daytime price was 5$, so that made me even happier - I like getting deals.
But back to Vieux Montréal (Old Montreal). The old port city is like a piece of Europe right here in Canada. There are beautiful old buildings with gothic arches and cobbly paths. The church is fantastic, too! One of my favorite things about Montréal as a whole is the architecture. Rather, I really appreciate the contrasts. For example, on Ste-Cat's, there are these wonderful 18th century buildings sitting right next to La Chateau de Sexe, or a convenience store. Just randomly throughout the city, there are these beautiful unpretentious 17th, 18th, 19th century buidlings that are still in use (renovated, i'm sure). It's really a delight finding them. Especially the churches. People through history have spent a lot of time and energy sculpting monuments to their gods.
Eventually, we headed back and saw a long line of people trying to get in somewhere. after questioning, we discovered it was the bar hop that Brian had arranged tickets for. By this point we had already given up on this because they were supposed to email him about how to get the bracelets and didn't, but serendipity brought us there. Anyway, we bought the wristbands for 15$ and decided to go home to change. We also called Adam and Juli but they didn't want to go out again. Turns out they spent some time on rue Ste-Catherine looking for us while we were elsewhere, then had dinner and headed back. I don't blame them for not wanting to come out, and I feel bad to have ditched them earlier.
Anyway, we change into nicer clothes in the room. don't know about the others', but mine are significantly less warm. We head out to Crescent Street (this road should never be called rue Crescent - it's far too Anglophone) where a lot of the bars were located. Of course there are huge lines of Americans at all of the bar hop bars. For some reason, we passed a group chanting "U-S-A! U-S-A!" Why go to Canada?? Most were shouting obnoxiously and doing their stupidamerican thing. Ah well. Such are my countrymen with whom I am embarrassed to associate myself. So we went to the first bar whose line wasn't too long (only 8 mins or so) called Winnie's. It's in the Winston Churchill Pub building and has a lot of pictures of the man on the walls. Kind of weird if you ask me. Anyway, we grab a few overpriced drinks (three or so) and get all set to head to the next bar when my brother realizes he doesn't have his coatcheck ticket (coatchecks are how they make money. they force you to check your coat). This means he can't get his jacket back (very important for Montréal's December nights, especially those that include snow, sleet and freezing rain like this one). In order to get his coat back, we need to come back at 3:30 when they close. Oy!
Well, we head to the next bar anyway (this was before the precipitation) and wait in a line for a while (David pretending he's not freezing his ass). Next to the bar, there is a store (closed) called Condom World or something. They sell condoms, sex toys and other accessories. There's a sign on the door that says "14+". How disturbing is that? Anyway, the next bar turns out to be a collection of 3 bars so we spend a decent amount of time in the English pub downstairs, quite a bit of time in the dancy-type club on the second story, and very little time upstairs in the lounge upstairs. Eventually, after several more drinks, it is time to head out. Next, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Bad idea. First, it wasn't really that much fun. Second, the drinks were even more overpriced than at a normal bar. But most of all, three minutes after we get in there, the DJ says, "All the Americans in the house make some noise!!" and the whole crowd erupts. YACH!! The three of us left before we had a chance to warm up. Here my memory grows a bit fuzzy, but i think we only went to one other bar. This one was not on the bar hop, and it was almost last call. I order a beer of which i drank half. The other half i offer to my beer-hating brother: "Try some of this, it tastes pretty good....Actually, I can't really taste it." He refuses, so instead, Brian finishes it off. What a good friend :-p.
As it is approaching 3:30 am, we head back to Winnie's to reclaim David's coat. By this time, it is not only snowing, but also freezing raining. Poor guy, losing his coatcheck claim....at least he didn't have to check it anywhere else. So he's in there, Brian and I wait for him next door and eventually he shows up. I was smashed and even Brian was silly, but somehow David didn't get drunk that night. The kid can hold his liquor!
Anyway, with alcohol in stomach and coats on backs, we triumphantly return to the hostel. To find that there's a random guy sleeping in one of the beds. Guess thats what hostels are good for, eh? It was evening, it was morning, the first day.
At the hostel, they were very nice and all, and we got our room with a bathroom just big enough to hold a toilet and a shower stall and still allow the door to open. notice this is still too small to allow a person inside to stand up and open the door. but it was large enough for our purposes. the room was kinda nice actually. well, not nice, but clean. Two bunk beds meaning four firmish beds that only squeaked a little and had no springs to jut into your back. Plenty of warm heat, potable water and space for bags. It was better than some places I stayed at in China for sure!
Anyway, there, i put on warmer clothes. well, more clothes, really - in sum i was wearing four socks, four shirts, one jacket, two pants, one hat, two gloves (stand up, sit down, keep moooooving...if anybody catches the reference, you win the prize), glasses and a kippah.
anyway, so we head out to see Montréal. We arrange to meet Adam and Anjuli on rue Ste-Catherine Oeste because it seems like a pretty happening spot and sorta halfway between the hôtel and hostel. After waiting forEVER, eventually, i convince Brian to call (or rather let me call) Anjuli's cel phone from his. Apparently, the two of them had been walking in the wrong direction from the start. It would take probably another half hour just to meet up again. That was too damn long to wait as it was already approaching 8 or so and we were hungry, so we decided to split up for dinner and meet later that night. The three of us saw all of Ste-Cat's (pretty much Montreal's version of Beijing's Sanlitun foreigner bar district - more on this later) and made it to Vieux Montréal (beautiful at night!) and Chinatown where we eventually ate. The menu there was so extensive! They had all sorts of dishes that i had never seen before in America or in China (they spell General Tso as General Tao), and the food was really fantastic (i had ginger lo mein. yum). And the kicker was that the fortune cookie was bilingual - French and English. It's a shame we were too hungry to wait to eat at the first place we walked into, though. There, everything smelled sooo good! It was über crowded, though, and when we walked in to wait for a table, we kinda wound up standing in between a few tables of people enjoying their dinners. The waitstaff didn't seem to like that all too much, and kinda shooed us out without shooing. Oh! And I also got something called dragon candy. It's a little candy about the size of a marshmallow. The center is peanuts and chocolate and coconut and caramel and that is covered with a wispy layer of sugar that dissolves in your mouth, kinda like cotton candy. The whole concoction was wonderful, and i bought half a dozen for 3$ (that's how they write $3) with plans to bring them back home. Needless to say, they never made it back home. I found out the daytime price was 5$, so that made me even happier - I like getting deals.
But back to Vieux Montréal (Old Montreal). The old port city is like a piece of Europe right here in Canada. There are beautiful old buildings with gothic arches and cobbly paths. The church is fantastic, too! One of my favorite things about Montréal as a whole is the architecture. Rather, I really appreciate the contrasts. For example, on Ste-Cat's, there are these wonderful 18th century buildings sitting right next to La Chateau de Sexe, or a convenience store. Just randomly throughout the city, there are these beautiful unpretentious 17th, 18th, 19th century buidlings that are still in use (renovated, i'm sure). It's really a delight finding them. Especially the churches. People through history have spent a lot of time and energy sculpting monuments to their gods.
Eventually, we headed back and saw a long line of people trying to get in somewhere. after questioning, we discovered it was the bar hop that Brian had arranged tickets for. By this point we had already given up on this because they were supposed to email him about how to get the bracelets and didn't, but serendipity brought us there. Anyway, we bought the wristbands for 15$ and decided to go home to change. We also called Adam and Juli but they didn't want to go out again. Turns out they spent some time on rue Ste-Catherine looking for us while we were elsewhere, then had dinner and headed back. I don't blame them for not wanting to come out, and I feel bad to have ditched them earlier.
Anyway, we change into nicer clothes in the room. don't know about the others', but mine are significantly less warm. We head out to Crescent Street (this road should never be called rue Crescent - it's far too Anglophone) where a lot of the bars were located. Of course there are huge lines of Americans at all of the bar hop bars. For some reason, we passed a group chanting "U-S-A! U-S-A!" Why go to Canada?? Most were shouting obnoxiously and doing their stupidamerican thing. Ah well. Such are my countrymen with whom I am embarrassed to associate myself. So we went to the first bar whose line wasn't too long (only 8 mins or so) called Winnie's. It's in the Winston Churchill Pub building and has a lot of pictures of the man on the walls. Kind of weird if you ask me. Anyway, we grab a few overpriced drinks (three or so) and get all set to head to the next bar when my brother realizes he doesn't have his coatcheck ticket (coatchecks are how they make money. they force you to check your coat). This means he can't get his jacket back (very important for Montréal's December nights, especially those that include snow, sleet and freezing rain like this one). In order to get his coat back, we need to come back at 3:30 when they close. Oy!
Well, we head to the next bar anyway (this was before the precipitation) and wait in a line for a while (David pretending he's not freezing his ass). Next to the bar, there is a store (closed) called Condom World or something. They sell condoms, sex toys and other accessories. There's a sign on the door that says "14+". How disturbing is that? Anyway, the next bar turns out to be a collection of 3 bars so we spend a decent amount of time in the English pub downstairs, quite a bit of time in the dancy-type club on the second story, and very little time upstairs in the lounge upstairs. Eventually, after several more drinks, it is time to head out. Next, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Bad idea. First, it wasn't really that much fun. Second, the drinks were even more overpriced than at a normal bar. But most of all, three minutes after we get in there, the DJ says, "All the Americans in the house make some noise!!" and the whole crowd erupts. YACH!! The three of us left before we had a chance to warm up. Here my memory grows a bit fuzzy, but i think we only went to one other bar. This one was not on the bar hop, and it was almost last call. I order a beer of which i drank half. The other half i offer to my beer-hating brother: "Try some of this, it tastes pretty good....Actually, I can't really taste it." He refuses, so instead, Brian finishes it off. What a good friend :-p.
As it is approaching 3:30 am, we head back to Winnie's to reclaim David's coat. By this time, it is not only snowing, but also freezing raining. Poor guy, losing his coatcheck claim....at least he didn't have to check it anywhere else. So he's in there, Brian and I wait for him next door and eventually he shows up. I was smashed and even Brian was silly, but somehow David didn't get drunk that night. The kid can hold his liquor!
Anyway, with alcohol in stomach and coats on backs, we triumphantly return to the hostel. To find that there's a random guy sleeping in one of the beds. Guess thats what hostels are good for, eh? It was evening, it was morning, the first day.
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Date: 2003-01-29 10:32 pm (UTC)enjoyable. where's the rest, hm? ;)
i cannot stand americans either. why are we american anyway? i vote we get irish citizenship.