Montreal Beer Fest and Jon!

30.05.2008

I woke up with the sun this morning and headed off to meet Dominik who drove me to Montreal. The forecast had said it would rain like a maniac all weekend, and the predictions were coming true.

A couple of days ago, I went out to say goodbye to two dear, sweet friends of mine, Dinis and Dominika, and I happened to sit beside Dominik, who overheard I was going to Montreal on my motorcycle. He also knew it was going to rain, so he offered me a ride. I gladly accepted because I was about to chicken out and take the bus. So, we had a nice drive up with his friend Michael, who he shares his VRTUCar with at least 500 times a year.

Dominik is great. He dropped me off right downtown and told me where to meet my people. I had arranged to meet up with a Swiss girl, Severine, my Montreal friend Mike, a couple of TravelPod bloggers (Jon aka travellingjon and Pierre-Luc, his friend, aka wizzoh) and two of my friends who I was pretty sure weren't going to actually get off their butts and leave Ottawa to come and party with me (*ahem* Dave and Jon). Nevertheless, these are the people I was hoping to meet at noon at Bonaventure station.

I showed up a little early and went walking around the little mall at Bonaventure, which (only in Canada) contains an indoor skating rink.

It turned out that only two of the people I wanted to meet showed up, Severine and Mike. That was OK, but I was a little worried that Jon hadn't received my email about where to meet up.

I convinced them to head to the beer festival early, because I was pretty sure it would get busier later that night. And I was right, when we left, there were HUGE lineups. So anyway, when we got there, we looked around for a minute, but Mike told me that Jon had called him, and I wanted to know why, so I had to check my email to see if he wrote...nope, nothing from Jon, where could he be? Next, I called the number that he called Mike at, and a lady said that he was at the beer fest too. What luck! Kind of! How was I supposed to find him there exactly? I just sort of gave up, and resigned myself to the fact that I'd still be looking for him tomorrow.

We bought our beer tickets, quickly snagged a table and scrounged around for chairs (we're sneaky snakes, we are). Then we devised a scheme that would allow us to save each other's chairs, but also allow for us all to have drinks at the same time (mostly). It worked out pretty good. I liked that you could order half beers to taste. Here is a list of the beer that I drank. Most of it was really good.

Sleeman Honey Brown ($5, but it came with a glass that I used to put the rest of the samples in) (it's OK) Asahi (of course good) Maui Brewing Co.'s Big Swell IPA (not so good) Rogue Ales Brewery's Chipotle Ale (really really good) Coffee beer from Le Bilbroquet (also really good) Some kind of beer with Framboise in it (Severine got it for me)

So we were just hanging out, when someone who looks vaguely familiar came up to me and said "Are you Louise?" "Yes, OH MY GOD IT'S JON I'M SO GLAD YOU FOUND ME!"

It was so cool, that out of everyone in the whole crowd I could be found my Mr. Jon, I just have that kind of movie star face, don'tchaknow? So now, I could take it easy, and I didn't have to stress out about finding him anymore, and I could just enjoy the rainy (but still sunshiney afternoon in the half-covered patio we had concocted for ourselves). It was good times. Jon and I talked some TravelPod shop, but mostly we talked about his upcoming trip to Europe, the perks that he gets for covering the beer fest for some local media, and his friend's website, DimancheMatin.com.

So, we stayed there till about 6 p.m. and we decided to take Severine to have her first poutine. She didn't really enjoy the cheese curds. Mike said that the place we went to was the best in the whole city (Frites Doree). I guess I'll just have to believe him on that one.

After that, we went to Fou Foune Electrique for a blast from the past (the last time I was there it was 1998), and we kept the ball rolling and ordered some more beer. Don't ask.

At about midnight, we were all pretty tired so we all went home for the night. Yay!

Ice skating in a mall