Montreal Parting Comments

GREETINGS ALL -- ONE MORE TIME FROM MONTREAL
Although there is a slight bit of rain tonight, it's not enough to stifle any of the activity on the streets around the hotel where we live here. I tried to take some pictures. It's hard to capture the degree of activity there is here but I guess it's like some of the streets in Southern Cal where cars are pretty much bumper to bumper down Saint Denis Avenue. We're at the Quartier Latin hotel located at 1763 St. Denis here in Montreal.

WE JUST HAD DINNER AT A VEGETABLE DELI ACROSS THE STREET
"You pay for what you take...." There isn't any meat in the place. It is very popular. It was crowded. As far as I can remember, there was eggplant, cous cous, salad, carrot soup, marinated pea pods, bulgar wheat salad, fresh tomatoes marinated with feta cheese, fresh basil and vinegar, celery root, mangoes, kiwis, pears, grapes, pineapple, strawberries, tortilla in which you could wrap up alfalfa sprouts, bean sprouts. This huge variety of good food gave us the confidence that we could actually be well fed without meat. When we came in, I asked how it worked and the lady at the front told me that it was best to go light and come back for more if needed. She had seen so many people take far more food than they could eat and wind up paying for more than they needed -- leaving "paid for" food on the plates.

NOW THAT WE ARE LEAVING, I KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THE LANGUAGE SITUATIONS
Basically, I've figured out how to handle the language situation here. The best way is to introduce the conversation using French -- kind of like a blood test. When the person realizes you have the right blood or the right motives in mind, a transition to English at the first point where understanding becomes difficult is easy and welcome and there is no real problem then to speak either language. Still, French is best.

THE FUN BEGINS
Well, tomorrow we leave and it's back to quite a dynamic schedule when we return.

Tonight and tomorrow early, we will be packing things to go.

THE HOTEL IS COMFORTABLE AND WE SLEEP WELL
Also, humid as it is tonight, the whole picture will change almost immediately here soon when the A/C comes on. It gets dry and cool in a big hurry. There is no control on the cooler. It just puts out. So we rug up with long sleeved shirts and pants until we go to bed. Very good sleeping very quiet. Then in the morning the A/C goes off and it warms up as we get up. No complaints.

YESTERDAY WE SPENT THE DAY ON THE ISLANDS
I know that I haven't written about all the official things we saw but I can do that later. We went to the islands yesterday on the subway and spent the day in the botanical gardens and Olympic venues; went up in the high tower to get a perspective of the city, met a retired airline pilot up there who told me so many things about the city in such a short period of time. For instance, electricity costs $.06/kwh -- about like at home. But if you use alternative forms of energy in winter then the cost for year round energy goes as low as $.03. That's pretty low cost. I can imagine that most everyone uses electricity for whatever energy they need. Petrol products are hard to come by here. More on that later.

TODAY WE TOOK OUR OWN UNOFFICIAL TOUR OF SOME INTERESTING SPOTS
After taking our time to get out this morning, we actually left toward the north walking along a trail marked for us in a guide book Sometimes these have been a little on the non-interesting side however, it was so interesting walking around the area, we spent the whole day walking in the neighborhoods, talking to people, stopping to see interesting things. Kathy likes to go in more shops than I do. I don't know what she looks for -- cheap clothes sometimes, books other times. We got some of each to pack up now tonight. Sometimes I take a break or get into conversation or go visit another place until she is ready to move along.

Anyway, along the way, the tour took us through a park. Untypical of Idaho parks, the parks here on a Monday have a lot of people in them; There were people walking the dog, letting the dog fetch a ball out of the lake, there were couples doing all sorts of things -- I mean studying, walking, talking, there were old guys reading books, ladies going to the store. We saw some homeless people about like in Boise, we'd estimate. The ponds we walked along turn into ice skating rinks in the winter. There were many interesting 19th century homes.

About noon, I began to think about lunch. I poked my head into what, after analysis turned out to be a Hebrew deli. With as many people as were occupying the places in there at 11:50 am and more coming in at a good clip, I suggested we might get a sandwich for ourselves and put it in our bag. I could see from the people already inside, that there would likely be no room for any more people. Kathy went in and ordered the sandwich after we conferred and decided on the corned beef. After Kathy got our sandwich, we watched the place for a few more minutes and line got so long it came out onto the street and then the proprietor came out and shooed the people over toward the wall to keep from blocking the sidewalk. A bystander told me that the place had been written up in the paper a week or so ago and since then, what had been a successful business suddenly became highly successful.

After awhile, we opened our sandwich and we began to see why it might have been sucessful. Half a sandwich was all each of us needed or wanted. That and a Perrier made a nice lunch for us.

Of course there was a lot of walking. We found a bakery. They had small mille feuilles. I had one. We stopped for coffee a few times. One time we stopped after we had found a carton of raspberries for $1 at a fruit stand that had all kinds of fruit. Kathy washed the berries and I started talking to a man who had migrated here from Ethiopia. He was a retired psychologist and he filled us in some on the local color. At that place, the sidewalk restaurants were quite large and the guidebook said that it was a popular evening place. There are a lot of those around here so --....!

AFTER DINNER WRAP UP
After eating we weren't quite ready to come back to the room so we had a coffee. I had my second "granity" which is basically coffee and chocolate -- cold. Good! and something I really enjoyed yesterday in the heat. Then, we went around the block and saw that within a block of this hotel is a transportation depot where there is a subway stop and where the airport bus comes directly. Now, it might cost us a little more than $5 to go back to the airport tomorrow but it will be welcome, shorter and easier to figure out. Had we known that before we came down, we probably wouldn't have had "as much to write about" HaHa as you saw in the last issue.