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jamesqI managed to get to the Bell Centre with time to spare. Mostly because what I thought was curtain time was actually door time. I cooled my heels in a crowd getting in, and then found out I had decent seats. My show for the evening? Trevor Noah. He puts on a really funny show. In this case, I was surprised by just how much of the show was local colour. He worked a lot of French Canadian (and Montreal in particular) material into the narrative. The whole show was wry and observant and very very good. No doubt some version of the show will make it to Netflix in a year or so. It was probably the most English thing I would do in Montreal. He's primarily an English-language comic, and a lot of the feeling-alien-in-Montreal material was eaten up by the crowd.
I've said this before - I really need to watch more comedy shows, they really are good entertainment.
After the show I took a wandering route back to my suite. I was looking for some supper and wasn't really sure what I wanted. The line between the Bell Centre and McGill University seems to be the home of lots and bars and nightclubs aimed at the college crowd. I wasn't up for that, or even a sit down meal, so I opted for a take-out chicken place I'd never tried before. They gave me about twice what I was looking for so I enjoyed about half of it on the balcony once I was back to the suite, and half the next morning.
My inability to speak French is still causing me some needless anxiety. It was like a combination of feeling rude, and also like I was letting people down. I am a bad Canadian for not being able to at least say a little bit of French. I even tried to learn "I'm sorry, I don't speak French", in French, but the one time I managed to blurt it out, I managed to say "I'm sorry, I don't speak English", in English. Someone just shoot me and put me out of my misery.
Anyway, I woke up at 6:30 in the morning when the light came streaming into the suite. I had some leftovers, sat on the uncomfortable furniture a bit, and then decided I was still tired, so went for a half hour nap. about four hours later, I woke up again. Clearly, it was necessary. I had a full day to myself in Montreal, and I really only had two goals: Have a smoked meat sandwich at Schwartz's, and go on the Pilgrimage du Cyr (which I'll detail in a future post). On the bright side, it was a lot closer to lunch time now. I got a day pass for transit. Because the Metro treats a day pass as 24 hours from when you activate it, rather than the calendar day, meant I could use it to get to the airport tomorrow.
Incidentally, the Metro has stained glass in the stations. In fact, I noticed that a lot of the permanent, public art in Montreal was religious iconography. So many saints. For a brief moment I thought this was odd because I was comparing it to Calgary, which doesn't really have a single thing dominating the art scene. And then I came to my senses - Calgary doesn't have saints, it has cowboys. So many cowboys. Oh well, everywhere has it's thing. Vancouver is Haida-inspired art and Inukshuks; Calgary has cowboys; Montreal has saints.
So first order of business was lunch. I grabbed my pass, went to the Metro station, and transferred to the St. Laurent Blvd bus, which is basically the "main street" for the St. Urbain district, well-known to many Richler fans. About six people got off the bus and immediately got in the lineup for Schwartz's Deli, which was my second hint that the place was as popular as I imagined. The first was the lineup.
When I was planning the trip, I asked my friend Sheldon for the secret deli that real Montrealers went to when they wanted the Schwartz's experience. His answer was Schwartz's. Ok, message received. I got in the line and waited. This led to some good news/bad news. The good news is that the line was moving reasonably quickly and I got into the restaurant (despite the above lineup) in about twenty minutes. The bad news is, being by myself, I could have skipped the line and grabbed a stool at the counter. Oh well. I was in no hurry to get anywhere.
My sandwich was delicious, and exactly what I needed. Highly recommended. Having missed out on an authentic Chicago Pizza (and finding a Coney hotdog to be underwhelming) I really wanted a must-have food that was worth it. This was worth it.
Afterward, I wandered up and down the St Laurent, and spent the afternoon window-shopping. The area was well into late-stage gentrification, and clearly isn't the slum that Richler wrote about. But you can still see signs of what it once was:
Brand new town homes on one side, warehouses on the other.
Anyway, it was a pleasant, but quiet afternoon of solo exploring. That's pretty much it for this entry - here are a bunch of murals I found, mostly along St. Laurent Blvd:
I've said this before - I really need to watch more comedy shows, they really are good entertainment.
After the show I took a wandering route back to my suite. I was looking for some supper and wasn't really sure what I wanted. The line between the Bell Centre and McGill University seems to be the home of lots and bars and nightclubs aimed at the college crowd. I wasn't up for that, or even a sit down meal, so I opted for a take-out chicken place I'd never tried before. They gave me about twice what I was looking for so I enjoyed about half of it on the balcony once I was back to the suite, and half the next morning.
My inability to speak French is still causing me some needless anxiety. It was like a combination of feeling rude, and also like I was letting people down. I am a bad Canadian for not being able to at least say a little bit of French. I even tried to learn "I'm sorry, I don't speak French", in French, but the one time I managed to blurt it out, I managed to say "I'm sorry, I don't speak English", in English. Someone just shoot me and put me out of my misery.
Anyway, I woke up at 6:30 in the morning when the light came streaming into the suite. I had some leftovers, sat on the uncomfortable furniture a bit, and then decided I was still tired, so went for a half hour nap. about four hours later, I woke up again. Clearly, it was necessary. I had a full day to myself in Montreal, and I really only had two goals: Have a smoked meat sandwich at Schwartz's, and go on the Pilgrimage du Cyr (which I'll detail in a future post). On the bright side, it was a lot closer to lunch time now. I got a day pass for transit. Because the Metro treats a day pass as 24 hours from when you activate it, rather than the calendar day, meant I could use it to get to the airport tomorrow.
Incidentally, the Metro has stained glass in the stations. In fact, I noticed that a lot of the permanent, public art in Montreal was religious iconography. So many saints. For a brief moment I thought this was odd because I was comparing it to Calgary, which doesn't really have a single thing dominating the art scene. And then I came to my senses - Calgary doesn't have saints, it has cowboys. So many cowboys. Oh well, everywhere has it's thing. Vancouver is Haida-inspired art and Inukshuks; Calgary has cowboys; Montreal has saints.
So first order of business was lunch. I grabbed my pass, went to the Metro station, and transferred to the St. Laurent Blvd bus, which is basically the "main street" for the St. Urbain district, well-known to many Richler fans. About six people got off the bus and immediately got in the lineup for Schwartz's Deli, which was my second hint that the place was as popular as I imagined. The first was the lineup.
When I was planning the trip, I asked my friend Sheldon for the secret deli that real Montrealers went to when they wanted the Schwartz's experience. His answer was Schwartz's. Ok, message received. I got in the line and waited. This led to some good news/bad news. The good news is that the line was moving reasonably quickly and I got into the restaurant (despite the above lineup) in about twenty minutes. The bad news is, being by myself, I could have skipped the line and grabbed a stool at the counter. Oh well. I was in no hurry to get anywhere.
My sandwich was delicious, and exactly what I needed. Highly recommended. Having missed out on an authentic Chicago Pizza (and finding a Coney hotdog to be underwhelming) I really wanted a must-have food that was worth it. This was worth it.
Afterward, I wandered up and down the St Laurent, and spent the afternoon window-shopping. The area was well into late-stage gentrification, and clearly isn't the slum that Richler wrote about. But you can still see signs of what it once was:
Brand new town homes on one side, warehouses on the other.
Anyway, it was a pleasant, but quiet afternoon of solo exploring. That's pretty much it for this entry - here are a bunch of murals I found, mostly along St. Laurent Blvd:
