Old-Montreal, poutine, Mont-Royal and Pop Montreal

22.08.2008

Keith woke up today, and he was not happy. He didn't want to stay at Anika's house anymore. There was not enough privacy, and he's not used to not having his own bathroom/shower at all, or ever for that matter. So that's disappointing, but OK, I explained to Anika, and she said we were free to stay the night again, or leave, either way was good for her, obviously. I tried to come up with some good ideas for places to stay, but I don't really do well with travel plans on the fly like that, so I just picked something from Trip Advisor randomly. This also, was shared accomodations, and it made Keith feel like I wasn't listening. He was upset, so he left for a while to think about what to do. While he was gone, I had a nice time with Anika and Cedric learning how to make crepes like real French people. Cedric had just come to Montreal from France, after he met Anika in Greece last year. They are a really cute hippie couple, and they know how to make a mean lemon and sugar crepe. Just as the crepes were done, Keith came back and we all sat down together for breakfast. It was delicious, and we had a kind of broken, caveman English discussion until about noon. I wanted to show Keith around the port and the old part of town, so we went down there after washing some dishes and cleaning up. I was a little cranky and disappointed about the miscommunication. Also, I was not feeling the late 19th century heritage-style festival happening on this end of town at the moment, so I was not a happy camper either. We walked around and around getting lost and hungry. Anika gave us the address to two of the best poutine places, and I knew exactly where one of them was, so we went over there and pretty much instantly cheered up. The Mont-Royal area is my favourite part of town, it's full of small-time indie rockstars and hipsters of all shapes and sizes, it's probably about as trendy as you can get in this city. St-Laurent Ave. was shut down for a massive street party, and there was a Pop Montreal pre-show on Rachel St., right across from Patati Patata, the 2nd best place for poutine in Montreal. It was a very nice scene and it was good to get out of the hot sun and stop being all meowy for a bit. My plan was for us to go up the giant mountain, so we did that after our delicious poutine. Yes, it is the best I've ever had, by the way. We climbed up the regular person path for a while, but then Keith started tackling some of the rocks. Ai yi yi, I'm glad I wore my hiking boots, but I was also wearing a dress, and had no bag to carry my wallet and water in. There definitely were some great views on the way up, and at one point, I was convinced I'd have to call the police helicopter to rescue me off the side of the mountain, but we made it up anyway. We tried to find the sunset, but couldn't get to the right spot in time, oh well. We came down from the mountain and went for dinner at Schwartz's, yes the legendary smoked meat sandwich place. Again. Keith made friends with this Italian-French guy sitting across from us, and after that, we headed back to the Pop Montreal show. Caroline Keating was playing piano and singing very sweetly, so we stayed there for a while. I asked some of the people there how to get to the Dieu du Ciel, which is my favourite pub in town. It was easy, and I had a pepper-spice beer as well as a coffee one. Yum. Then we went back to Anika's after all.

Climbing Mont Royal