Gotta tell you, I love, love, love, love, love Canada in general and Montreal in particular. But I hate (exponentially) French keyboards. So bear with me as I compose a love letter to Canada from our home exchange house in the Plateau, our favorite Montreal neighborhood.
If you followed my coverage of our last trip to Montreal, or the trip before that, or the time we went to Ottawa to get married, you'll know that for the past seven years I have actively researched ways to move here. Montreal, to me, represents the best of France and the most convenient aspects of North America combined.
For example, everyone bikes here, there are bike lanes, the food is excellent and everyone speaks French. And on the North American side of the scale, people don't gag when I try to speak my less-than-perfect French to them, the customer service is good, they have great beer, it's within a day's drive of where my family lives and peanut butter is readily available.
Here is what we are doing while we are in Canada for a week and a half:
I am attending a professional conference which I hope is slightly interesting. But before that starts we will go to two solid days of free outdoor Jazz Fest concerts in Vieux Montreal's Place des Arts. On Saturday and Wednesday evenings we will watch the skies over Vieux Montreal light up with fireworks thanks to the International Fireworks competition. Pretty awesome, right?
We still haven't attended half the fun Montreal events we want to try, like the Juste pour Rire comedy festival and the Mondial du Biere (craft brew festival). There's also a French roots music week we must check out at some point.
The most amazing experience I had in Canada was being in Montreal for Canada Day. Every ethnicity was represented, every family waved its little Canadian flag, everyone seemed happy and booze was conspicuously absent.
I compare that experience with one in Albany, New York on the way up to Montreal. We drove for three hours towards our Montreal home exchange, but our kids are little and can't tolerate a whole day in the car. We stopped for the night at a rather nice all-suites hotel. Outside our window, on the streets of our capitol, hundreds of what appeared to be low-level state government workers were celebrating their freedom to get as drunk as possible in honor of our nation's independence. As I unloaded the car, a group of three drunk women, holding each other up, asked me if they could use the hotel's bathroom. When I responded that I had no idea, one called me name that rhymes with witch. Even if I had the same experience in Montreal it would sound more exotic in French.
If only it weren't 10 below zero all winter.
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