Montreal

I spent several days this week walking around Montreal. What a lovely city--I had no idea. Aside from the fact that I sometimes felt like the whole city was making fun of my inability to learn French ("Sorry, we're out of tour booklets and maps in English, but we have them in French"), I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

The old city is very European (everyone says that and I didn't believe it until I arrived--there are gently curving streets that you might see in Oxford; the grey stone buildings are big, but not too big--only a couple of stories so that the street isn't overwhelmed; different styles of architecture nestle seamlessly into each other--each building is similar to, and yet different from the one beside it).

The Notre Dame Cathedral of Montreal was lovely and different--it was covered with blues, greens and purples.



I also did a lot of wandering through Chinatown, enjoying mango bubble tea (it's like a smoothie with gummy bears in it) and all sorts of pastries (one was fried dough with beef curry in the middle).

I climbed Mont Royal--the mountain in the middle of the city after which the city is named. There is a wonderful view of the city from the top. Of course, I got lost for several miles (I am no good with a map). But the view was worth it.





I had heard that there was a cross at the very top, so I walked all the way there. Well, Wystan said that the cross on the top of the mountain was tacky, and, boy, was he right--it was covered with lights and evidently lights up at night. I was imagining something more like the 15th century Celtic cross that I hiked up to see on a hill outside of Dublin. Alas.




















While I was there I noticed that almost every restaurant I looked at/ate at (excluding the Thai/Chinese fusion one) sold something called poutine. And so, of course, I had to try it. It is french fries with cheese curd covered in gravy. It was good, although I will say that I generally prefer my french fries crisp, rather than in sauce. And when they offered me ketchup to go with the poutine, I got rather confused and just skipped that part (where do you put the ketchup? on top of the gravy?).

I visited both the Musee des beaux arts de Montreal, and the contemporary art gallery. The museum of fine arts had an intriguing collection of glass and of furniture. The stained glass peacock with wisteria was my favorite (the sky in the background is streaked with white to look like clouds, and both the wisteria and the peacock feathers are several colors swirled together).






Finally, from the contemporary art gallery, I really liked the bathtub in the aquarium, surrounded by electrical cords. It is called, "Silence and Slow Time," and has little bubbles hitting the bottom of the tub before rising to the surface. I liked it because it is incredibly random and a little funny, and is sort of light. The way the bathtub is lit up sort of reminds me of a fetus in utero.

One of the other exhibits was a bunch of lamps hanging from the ceiling. The artist made these lamps, imitating some identical mass produced ones. The difference was that the artist made these entirely out of materials that he found. This really annoyed me--what sort of excellence or genius is involved here? Excellence in copying ugly things?