Bienvenue de Montreal

[bironic]

synn and I went to Montreal for a week!

Neither of us had ever visited. We ate all of the things.* We also walked around all day almost every day to explore neighborhoods, sites, and museums, despite the nippy winter-into-spring weather: at or just below freezing most days, blustery, flurries. It wasn't too bad for me because Boston has been having a late, cold spring, but poor synn flew up from balmy North Carolina. The first front blew in on the evening we arrived, knocking over the bajillion road construction signs and sandwich boards as we leaned into the snowy gusts and cried, "Pourquoi????"

We spent Friday at a Supernatural con: synn is a fan of the show and I have liked one of the con guests, Sebastian Roché—who played a recurring character named Balthazar for, IIRC what synn said, one season out of 13, but SPN fans never forget—for, yikes, 20 years now, and never had the chance to meet him. We went to his Q&A, we took a silly Official Photo where synn suffered me to ask him to pretend to be evil vampire Mikael from The Vampire Diaries/The Originals and we pretended to be scared, and thanks to synn's sneaky generosity, I was also treated to a seat at his meet and greet, where seven attendees and Sebastian chatted around a table for 45 minutes. It was super nice. I also enjoyed the Q&A with Lisa Berry (Billy) and Kim Rhodes (Jody). Much more sedate and heartfelt than Sebastian's, who spent most of his time jumping on chairs and singing a dumb (but I guess charming) song with and about the house band. He did speak a lot of French, though, while making fun of Quebecois vs. France-French accents and lingo, which made my teenage heart go pitter-patter. And he made no secret of his attraction to Misha Collins, including, while answering an audience question about which cast member he would choose to be his slave for the day, the title of my new favorite Dr. Seuss book: "Mish on a Leash."

On the weekend we met up with xenophonique and were introduced to lunarflares, both delightful. We snacked our way through a maple syrup festival*—it's the tail end of maple-tapping season there—before retiring to xen's beautiful apartment for afternoon tea and conversation. A wonderful oasis during our city visit.

We checked out the cemetery and chalet-slash-lookout point atop Mont Royal, accidentally/on purpose got lost in the Underground City, and remarked on how the architecture varied so widely from street to street. We managed three museums:

• The modern art museum, where we inadvertently hit peak Montreal by wandering through their current exhibit on Leonard Cohen. The curators had built literal temples to this guy, from a small wooden cathedral, dark, hushed, in which microphones hung from the ceiling while a recorded chorus hummed "Hallelujah" in surround sound, to a Stonehenge-like ring of video screens of aging men trying to synchronize a recitation of his lyrics, to a "depression room"—"intended as a solo experience"—where, presumably, the people waiting in line would be able to commune with Cohen's spirit one on one.


• The fine arts museum: enormous, impressive, comprehensive. My favorites were the Inuit art floor (and the integration of native and non-native painting and sculpture in other galleries), the contemporary furniture and industrial design collection, and a particular painting at the entrance to a gallery about Canada finding its identity during the initial era of Western "settlement," because this painting, both disturbing and hilarious, portrays the horrors of colonization and fur trapping from the point of view of the beavers. (Perhaps obviously: warning for animal harm.) It is by Kent Monkman, who is part Cree and part Irish and who, I have since learned, paints and sculpts all sorts of striking, subversive subjects, often focusing on mistreatment of native populations and playing with artistic traditions. A+, all beavers go to heaven.


• The natural history museum at McGill, a nice collection of shells, fossils, rocks/minerals, cultural artifacts and taxidermied regional wildlife in an interior hall that reminded me of a couple of English museums of medical curiosities that I visited with deelaundry. xenakis probably knows what it's called, beyond the website's description of "an idiosyncratic expression of eclectic Victorian Classicism." I learned a lot about shrunken-head production.

Oh, plus the botanical gardens, or at least the greenhouse sections, since most of the outdoor beds contained bulb shoots juuust daring to poke through a dusting of snow. The niftiest room showcased fruit and spice plants, from banana and litchi trees to cinnamon and vanilla, star anise, annatto, peppercorns. We had not seen most of those edibles in their natural forms before. Super neat. We intended to visit the neighboring Insectarium but ran out of time, alas. There was a dead centipede waiting in my toothbrush holder when I got home so that probably counted as a consolation prize.

*Okay but seriously so many delicious eats. Patisserie! Apple strudel from Hof Kelsten and almond croissant from Maison Christian Faure! Chewy Montreal bagel from St. Viateur's "Maison du Bagel," rosemary flavored! Brisket pastrami sandwich with pickle from Schwartz's deli! We treated ourselves to one fancy dinner, a six-course tasting menu at Ile Flottante, beautiful plate after beautiful plate of mainly vegetable dishes with playful colors, textures, shapes, flavors, forms (leek foam, ash). Maple taffy, sweet maple mustard, tart maple vinaigrette, maple-cured bison on a sesame cracker, maple steamed buns, maple pulled-pork taco, maple-drizzled fried ham and cheese ball, two kinds of sweet-sour-savory maple meatballs. Sickly sweet thimbleful of ice cider. Poutine at La Banquise, because we had to: one classic and one Tex-Mex with ground beef, tomatoes, guacamole and hot peppers. Both were fine. I wouldn't go out of my way to have it, but it wasn't bad, just heavy. And a nice dinner in Little Italy of family-style eggplant ragu and mushroom and pancetta cavatelli. The most adorable steamed buns from Bao Bao Dim Sum. Other culinary miscellany, plus soup from Chinatown near our hotel, because synn came down with a chest cold our last couple of days. Valiant synn who still ventured out each morning, determined to check off items on our itinerary before needing late-afternoon siestas.

Now back to regular life: work and chores, reading, radical weather shifts, and hopefully soon, back to vidding.

Comments

[xenakis]

ALL THE FOOD! No kidding!
I am very impressed with your recollection of every tasty maplely bites you ate ;)

It was a pleasure to see you and meet synn ! I’m glad you enjoyed your visit, even with the city at its unsexiest. You are most welcome to come back in warmer climes. I’m sure there are foods you have yet to sample :)

[bironic]

I... may have taken some notes each day on highlights, including foodstuffs. :D

It was so good to see you and get to know you better in person. Thanks again for having us over to your home. <3

[yhlee]

I am salivating. I'm glad y'all had such a great trip! I've only once been to Montréal, years ago, but I remember it being lovely. :)

[bironic]

Apparently we visited at just the right/wrong time, as rates were low but we caught the city in the concrete-y grayness between attractive snow cover and greenleaf.

[minoanmiss]

Woot :)

[bironic]

:)

Thinking good thoughts for you, meanwhile.

[rionaleonhart]

Oh, wow, a Supernatural convention! That brings back memories. Must be a slightly odd experience if you don't watch the show, although I suppose it'd be confusing for me as well by this point, given that I'm five seasons behind (how is it possible to be simultaneously on season eight of something and five seasons behind???). I'm glad you could go to the meet and greet with Roché; that's really cool!

[bironic]

>>how is it possible to be simultaneously on season eight of something and five seasons behind???

Right? There are fans who weren't even alive when the show started.

>>Must be a slightly odd experience if you don't watch the show

Yes! It was interesting in two ways: one because I was witnessing audience members' deep fannish passion for the show and actors/actresses without feeling or participating in it, and two because SPN itself has apparently developed con traditions and in-jokes over the years that are unlike other cons I've been to, such as having the house band headed by one of the recurring character actors. Part con, part concert. Weird to me.

[marginaliana]

Wow, everything about this trip sounds delightful! The foooooood. You're making me want to go to Montreal just for the food.

Also: we inadvertently hit peak Montreal by wandering through their current exhibit on Leonard Cohen - hahaha

Also also: a "depression room"—"intended as a solo experience" - hahahahahahahaha

[bironic]

Such food! But of course you guys are getting the highlights reel - there were also the grungy parts of town and the so-so meals and so forth.

Thinking good thoughts for your face!

[ldthomps]

Oooh, I've never been to Montreal and have been meaning to go for close to 20 years since moving so close. Your list of food and museums both inspire! So glad you had a good trip.

[bironic]

Musée de Beaux-Arts definitely worth the trip! Good food also! Planning was very helpful on that front, as were recommendations from friends.

[shati]

That sounds like a great trip! I've only been to Quebec City, with my middle school, even though Montreal is closer.

There was a dead centipede waiting in my toothbrush holder when I got home so that probably counted as a consolation prize.

No!!! I am SO SORRY. Ours have vanished for the winter, knock on wood.

[bironic]

They must come over here when they leave your place - they tend to surface in spring and fall when the temperature shifts.

Also I'm definitely describing that centipede as dead for my own mental wellbeing - I'm not sure what the circumstances were since the lights were off and there was something brown and fuzzy on the end of the toothbrush that definitely touched my hand before I flung it off and washed it down the drain. Whyyyyyy

[seascribble]

This sounds like such a lovely holiday! You did so many things, most of them I have never done in my many visits to the city (because I'm always eating poutine and going to hockey games, haha). All Beavers Go To Heaven is the name of my new band.

[bironic]

:D

If we had been there for hockey I'm sure we wouldn't have done all the things either! The closest we came was catching a few minutes of a game on the TV in the Little Italy restaurant.

Also I forgot to credit Fangirl Movie Night and Bon Cop, Bad Cop for introducing me to tabernac, which featured prominently in Sebastian Roché's SPN con teasing of Quebecois. He laughed at how people basically yell "Bread! Table!" at each other.

[cinco]

I'm so glad you had a good time (but sorry poor Synn got sick! Getting sick on a trip is so lousy)! This was very fun to read, and I am envious especially of the tasting menu--it all sounds great!