Montreal

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My bouquet from my mum 

Inside the Basilica

The street outside our Inn

Our inn

Montreal Trip

Written on April 5th, 2013

I should preface this piece of writing but mentioning that I have had about 10 hours of sleep in the past two nights. 4 of those hours were spent on a bus. As I want this to be true of my thoughts at the time I’m writing it, I will not be editing this. No matter how anal retentive I can be about my writing after more and more reads.

With that said, I will begin. We started our trip in London, ON at 8:30pm on Thursday night, April 4th, 2013. We arrived at the bus station about 45 minutes early but as we are still very out of the loop of how to ride the bus we didn’t actually get into line until most of the bus was already waiting to board. We were forced to sit in the back, right next to the toilet. Literally, my shoulder was squished against the wall of the bathroom. There should be no such seat. This first bus took us to Toronto and we wound up being about half an hour early which did not help our wait time of already 1 hour and 40 minutes a bit. 

We decided that we would get something full to eat as snacks are very delicious but not often filling. So we walked around downtown Toronto and found a Pizza Pizza to hang out in for a little while before we headed back to the bus station. The Toronto Greyhound station has never ceased to confuse me. How people know what gate their bus is coming to is beyond me but after asking a few people in line we eventually found our spot, much closer to the front of the line this time. We spent about 5 hours on this bus. This was a surreal ride for me. Maybe because I was shocked at the amount of people who would choose to ride the Greyhound at 12:45am on a Friday morning or the places we stopped in the middle of nowhere that people actually got off at. I think it was more that I felt a sort of camaraderie with these people; a vampires of the Greyhound secret society or something. I’ve also never been more impressed with the way people can fold themselves into chairs to try to get some sleep. 

The Ottawa bus station was very small, thus much more manageable than Toronto’s. We found the bus to Montreal just fine and started the last leg of our Greyhound journey.

Basilica

Basilica Doors

Written on April 7th-8th, 2013

We arrived in Montreal right on time and quickly after found a taxi to take us to our hotel. Well, he dropped us off at Rue St Paul East, not West so we walked around a bit on the street until we finally found our destination. We didn’t complain much as the street was beautiful but Scott found that dragging the duffel bag on the cobblestone streets wasn’t an easy task. When we walked into the hotel 4 hours early for check-in, we didn’t expect to have a bed to sleep in, just wanted to drop our bags off and get a coffee. However the inn owner, Daniel, told us that our room would be ready at 11am so we walked to the nearest cafe for a croissant and a coffee and waited out the half hour or so there. Walking up the stairs we didn’t know what to expect from our room since my mum (ever so nicely) paid for it as my birthday present. We opened the door to two big windows, turquoise trim, wooden rafters, and most importantly a nice comfy bed. It was a beautiful room and we couldn’t have gotten nicer at a much more expensive hotel. We were also greeted by a bouquet of beautiful flowers from my mum. There were tulips, daisies, berries, lilies and more tulips. It was wonderful and smelled amazing the entire trip. We decided to take a nap that ended up lasting a couple hours more than we expected but when we woke we felt much better. We went to the Basilica. There are truly no words and the pictures don’t even begin to describe the beauty that is that place. Neither of us are very faithful people but we were both overwhelmed by the quiet, peaceful beauty of all the details, candles, statues and carvings. It was something we’ll never forget. We walked around old town and parts of downtown for a few hours before getting dinner and heading back to our room around 8pm. Shortly after we fell asleep and didn’t wake up until around 7am on my birthday to the smell of baking croissants downstairs. 

Monkeys from the Biodome!

Scott had planned on waking up early and surprising me with flowers but none of the floral shops were open so instead he handed me a  beautiful handmade card and we walked downstairs to enjoy an early breakfast to begin our day. Scott ordered a parmesan and tomato omelette and I got the smoked salmon omelette. We were given croissants with chocolate chips and mouth watering butter croissants as well. The coffee was fantastic but pastries and coffee are the Frenchies specialty so I should’ve expected greatness. For some reason we thought that walking to the exhibits we had planned on visiting that day would be a good idea so we started our day with that. It was a five mile walk on a cold but sunny day and it lasted a lot longer than we imagined. The pay off getting there without paying for a taxi or getting lost on the metro was worth it though so we prevailed. We started the day of exhibits with the Biodome. We weren’t sure what to expect from this because all of the explanations were in French but it was incredible. There were different parts of the dome that displayed different ecosystems of parts of Canada and the world. The first was the rainforest in which we saw monkeys, parrots and a blob that was supposedly a sloth! There was also the Gulf of St Lawrence with some disgusting looking fish, the mountains with river otters and porcupines and the Arctic with playful (and mostly lazy) penguins. 

Feeding the butterflies

We then hurried over to the Botanical Gardens before our Planetarium showing was to begin. We should have allowed for more time at the Gardens but we didn’t expect the massive amounts of people who would be pushing strollers through a three foot wide path and never moving out of the way. Either way the greenhouses were stuffed with flowers and plants and they were out-of-this world beautiful. The last greenhouse was filled with butterflies and flowers. There were many different kinds and it was an amazing experience. They would fly by our faces with such freedom I think we all envied them. 

One of the greenhouses

Greenhouse succulents

After the gardens we barely made it to our first showing at the planetarium, that opened that day, on my birthday! The first show was in a dome like room filled with bean bags and lawn chairs. The colors and music of the show were beautiful and we had a great experience here, even if I did get quite dizzy!  The next show was informational and looking back we should have been able to do this one before the first one as we didn’t quite know what was going on in that show. We were in a dome room again and were taught how to identify different constellations and stars. We learned about the galaxy and star clusters. It was actually very interesting! By this time we we had been at the museums for about five hours and were really achy from the walk so we decided to take a cab back to the hotel. Coming back we could really see just how far we walked!

A giant moth

All showered up and ready to go out for a fancy birthday dinner, I look in my bag and find no going out shoes! I had a black dress with black tights and all I had for footwear were brown elf boots and snow boots. So we took to the streets and found a boutique that imported all of their shoes from France, London and Italy. Needless to say, they were gorgeous. I found the perfect pair of little red heels to go with my black outfit and we were ready to head out! We went to Gibby’s where Scott got a Heineken to compliment his filet mignon and I got a MacAllen aged 12 to pair with my broiled lobster tails. Yummy! For dessert we got some sort of chocolate pie that we ate back at the hotel. It was quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever eaten and I’m certain I had a mouthgasm. We were pooped from the long day we had and stayed in watching SNL until falling asleep shortly before my day of birth ended. So strange being 21!

Our night out and my new red shoes!

On our last day in Montreal we woke up quite early to pick up our things and clean up the room a bit before heading down to breakfast which was, as always, impeccable. Wanting to go to Mont Royal to see the view of the city from the height we left right after breakfast. On our way we picked up a masque for myself which was imported from an artist who handmade it out of paper mache in Italy. It’s beautiful! Up at the top we wanted to reenact my grandfather’s proposal so Scott asked someone to take our picture and we surprised them when he got on one knee and asked me to marry him. They had no idea we were already married and were so very excited for us. A note, if you ever want someone to take a lot of cute pictures of you, pretend you are proposing and they will take plenty.

The beautiful mask I bought

We walked to the Latin Quarter where we stumbled across a very strange vintage thrift store that I’m not even sure how to explain. It was filled with many clothes, mannequins and just overall strange things. I bought a vintage scarf and a gargoyle for Scott’s friend Kevin. We found a Chinese bakery that was incredible and got a pizza for dinner before heading to the bus station.

It was the perfect birthday weekend. I really couldn’t have asked for anything better. The food was amazing, the city was beautiful and of course, the company was incredible. I realized just how patient, kind, and loving my husband truly is. I knew all this about him but after many shops, having to read a lot of different menus before finding English ones and stopping to look at all the flowers he never once grumped. In fact he even encouraged me to go find a pair of shoes for our night out. He is truly an amazing human being.

Scott pretending to propose 

Our ride home was stranger than the ride to Montreal. The bus to Ottawa was normal. Well, filled with normal looking people. I felt rather ill and sweaty the entire duration because the bus was so hot and I had two pairs of pants on from the day. When we got to Ottawa I took off my jeans and felt much better in my leggings. The ride to Toronto was interesting. Something must have happened over the weekend because there was security checking our belongings and making sure we weren’t bringing weapons on board. The man ahead of us reeked of weed and he gave us a strained look as she was swiping the metal detector over him and looking through his things. As everyone was getting on the bus I saw a boob. The woman in front of me had a loose fitting shirt on and apparently to stay comfortable had taken off her bra because when she lifted up her bag, I saw right down the armhole to her boob. Rather strange. Last to get on was a man who looked a bit out of it. He had a strange bobbish haircut that made him look like a cartoon and shortly after we departed he put on a cave hiking light to read that practically illuminated the entire front of the bus. The bus had a strange menagerie of smells that ranged from at first a smell of mold and bleach to the stench of a hot glue gun burning somewhere, to the smell of body odor lingering in the air. We weren’t sure what to make of the changing smells and tried not to think about it.

Arriving in Toronto we had about a two and a half hour wait before boarding our last bus to London. I went to get a bagel and coffee before sitting down to survey our surroundings and the people who could end up in the seats next to us. . This was a long wait and we were fairly anxious and ready to be home in bed with our Molly puppy.