I’ll try to rattle this out before I forget most of my trip to Montreal.

My car was delayed leaving for quite a while due to other people having work and interviews to do, in the mean time I bought The Old New Thing by Raymond Chen which I ended up reading most of during my stay in Montreal and the trip there and back.

After we got to Montreal (like 6 hours later) we met up with the other car and had dinner. And by had dinner, I mean we walked… for a very long time… looking for a restaurant, and it was probably half an hour before people started stopping and looking at the menu’s for places. This should have foreshadowed things to come. See, we were a group of 8, and no matter what the size of the group, I’m guaranteed to be The Fat One (I’m sure there’s a lemma on that somewhere), so while everyone else managed to keep up, my feet and shins and such began to hurt, and more, and worse, and so on. So I ended up trailing at the back some distance. We eventually hit a restaurant we accepted who’s name I cannot remember and stopped. There was a bit of a line, but in their very cramped dining area they managed to seat the eight of us. I had brochette du poulet if I remember correctly, which was pretty good. Oh, and then we walked back. Since it look us like 2 hours to find a restaurant, and then another 2 hours maybe to eat, plus getting to Montreal late in the first place, is was kind of late by the time we were done. Walked back some ways until we hit a bar called, strangely, Le Drug Store. I had a couple of amaretto and pineapple drinks and the evening passed with only one horribly embarassing photograph.

We headed back to the hotel (Days Inn) at some point, I can’t even remember. Then I checked out the room, it was very nice actually: two double beds, one for me, one for Curtis (no more spooning, yay); A TV; bathroom; semi-functioning lamps; a phone that always claims there is a message… well, despite those last few things, it was still a nice room, very clean and beds were comfy.

I woke up with a terrible headache… having drunk two drinks the night before. Why? Anyway, At around 11 we headed to a place called Coras (which I have no idea if I spelled right) for Brunch. Everything there looked terribly fattening, so I took the most healthy thing I could find, a banana-hazelnut chocolate crepe. It was huge, so I only ate about three quarters of it before giving up. Then we were off, for .. more.. walking. Okay, there’s nothing wrong with walking, but I do have my own difficulties with it… like nothing shows off to others very plainly how out of shape I am when I can’t keep up with their 2 hour treks walking at what I consider an entirely non-leisurely pace. But, strangely, but luckly, the subway for Saturday and Sunday was free, so we used that a bit.

The first part of the trip was shopping which is always a futile experience for me. Well, clothes shopping, we went to nice places that simply don’t make clothes that fit me, so I hung out with the girls and totally failed to be of any use at all. Alicia tried on a jacket and asked what I thought… I thought it fit okay, but the colour was drab. She liked the colour, but thought the fit was way off. I’m lucky I’m a guy and can get away with not having 17 pairs of shoes and outfits.. I have clothes, not outfits… and so I digress. Later we split up, some went back to the hotel for sleep, but not Curtis, Alicia, Laura and I… we headed to Old Montreal which was actually very close to our hotel anyway, and checked out the rain. Yeah, I Should probably mention that, it was pretty nasty all weekend, it never poured while we were out in it, but I did get damp due to my boycott of umbrellas. So it wasn’t the best weather, but we did sight-see a bit, which was nice. There are some photos of it, but as they include me, I’ll never post them myself. I was amazed at how often people spoke english there, I never needed to use my french at all. Then I tried actually using my french, and each time, failed miserably. Even stuff that made no sense… we were getting drinks at a place, and I asked for “Un Coke”… the guy asked me in english to speak more slowly… “A Coke”… “ah, une canette de Coke”…… .. …. .. .. … “oui”. That was the last time I made an effort. Then we tried to go to dinner, which was even more futile than the first time, since we brought wine and thus had 3 conditions, relatively cheap meals, bring-your-own-wine allowed, can seat eight, and no lines. Well, we gave up on that last one after a while and waited in line (after searching for a couple hours) for a couple hours. Someone then heard it would be another half hour before the line would move again, and as the rain was starting to come down, we sent an envoy to find another restaurant, and we did, Mochica.

Now that is a strange place. It didn’t have the bring your own wine, but it does have some of the longest wait times around, which curtis constantly defended as a Brother Chef. But the wait gave us time to go to the bathroom and check out the little wooden sculpture of two little guys, one attempting to force the other to felate him. I am not kidding.

My dinner was the Pulled Chicken in some sort of sauce. What I got was what I would have considered Obliterated Chicken, it looked like it had already been eaten once, but after being assured by another who had ordered it, having been just as surprised and trying it, it turned out to be okay tasting after all, I just ate with my eyes forward.

After that we got ready to go clubbing, which I was dreading, since as I think I’ve iterated before, I am not a clubber. I’m just too unattractive. But, as it turns out, no worries.

Most of our party was homosexual, so we ended up at a gay bar, which I didn’t clue in to at the time (we cabbed there, yeah, no walking!). I think I realized something was amiss when the drag queen dance show started. But at least I didn’t feel bad about having not picked up. I danced a bit, but my terrible dancing cannot compare to that of all my gay companions, or indeed the rest of the world at large. The last part of the night was spent trying to scream at each other to find out if we were leaving, when, and what was that about leaving. The music was really really loud Alicia, when asking me if I wanted to join in with having a shooter, nearly perforated my left eardrum, and not in a good way. I actually drank relatively a lot, considering I had promised myself that I wouldn’t drink after the headache of the night before, but the $1 shooters they had must have been watered down (or perhaps just slightly boozed-up water). At 3 am the place closed and we headed back to the hotel only stopping to have slices of pizza at a little place. Alicia agreed to split a peice with me, and then decided to decline, I tried to convince her otherwise, to the point of simply eating my half and deciding to throw out the other half, until the others we were with decided to eat it, heh. Curtis abstained from the pizza, but if he had offered her the slice, I bet she would have taken it. Piffle.

We went back to the hotel and I slept quite well, but we had to wake up relatively early for the check out. After that, not much to say, the two cars met up at a restaurant where curtis ate the largest amount of poutine I could even contemplate, and I looked at the condom machine in the restaurant bathroom. One of the dispensers actually sells four items, that are in a theme (pleasure pack or something)… a condom, oil, oriental ring which I have a shrewed idea about, and pleasure extender which I can’t even being to guess at. The great thing was is that they expected you to actually “collect all four”… like you’re going to keep buying from the machine hoping to complete your pleasure pack collection and have that wild sex with supplies by some roadside restaurant.

We met up once more to divvy up our money for the shared expenses, the hotel, the car rental, the booze, and I pretty much exausted my budget for the trip, which was $300. Then Laura drove me to a subway station where I could take it to a nearby stop and … yes, walk home. At least by Sunday the weather was amazing.

So ends the account of our voyage to Montreal, it was pretty fun though the weather was sucky. One day I hope to return, armed with some better french.