North America 2022 : Monday September 19 Day 21 A Quiet Day in Calgary

We were up very early in the morning at the motel as we had to catch a 4.5 hour flight to Calgary leaving from Montreal at 8:30am. There were still rumours floating around that the airports were experiencing some delays due to lack of staff so we aimed to get there at around 6am. We were packed and out the front door just as the taxi arrived. Typically it was a bit of a push to get the two suitcases and few pieces of hand-luggage into the vehicle but we managed and got to the airport in plenty of time. Time enough for a quiet cup of coffee and a pastry for breakfast. My kids always give me a hard time about wanting to be at an airport way too early but I have been in a car on the way to Melbourne airport and found myself stuck in traffic due to a major accident on the freeway. My passenger missed their flight. So I’m not having that happen again.

We hit a snag when we got to check-in as Canadian Airlines is strict on their luggage limits – we were allowed 23kg in each of two bags. Some shuffling around and we made it, but got caught out when we came to the security checks as they picked up that Robyn had swapped out her make-up bag for something else. It should have been in the check-in bags but had somehow ended up with our carry-ons in the scramble. There was no choice for us but to put another bag in with the check-in suitcases, and part with a lazy sixty odd dollars for the privilege. There’s always a snag on every trip, somewhere.

I checked later in the day and realised that the distance between Montreal and Calgary was a bit more (about 50kms) than the distance between Melbourne and Perth, which tended to put things into a bit of perspective. We knew Canada was large, we just weren’t really aware of how large.

The flight itself was okay, though hardly luxurious and we made it into Calgary in good time. There to meet us were our friends Jim and Lynda Crittall who were putting us up for three days in their large home in the suburbs.

We first met Jim and Lynda on our Mekong River cruise in 2017, and again when they passed through Melbourne in late 2019, when we had a very pleasant day in the Yarra Valley visiting wineries and a gin distillery. We’d kept in touch over the years and they generously offered to provide us with accommodation for our time in Calgary. It wasn’t that difficult a decision to accept.

We had nothing planned for the day other than general house-keeping and catching up. I still hadn’t been able to get my mobile phone plan to recognise the top-up data I had paid for. I was able to use Jim’s home wi-fi to check my credit card – I avoid doing this sort of thing on public networks – and knew that the charge had been applied so I contacted the phone company via their webpage talk app and got through to someone very quickly. Within about ten minutes I had explained what my problem was, they had it checked and acknowledged that the fault was at their end, and I had been assured that the problem would be fixed within an hour. And so it turned out.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with talking, napping and later eating. And we may well have thrown in a load of washing as well. Never hurts to keep up to date on that front.

North America 2022 : Sunday September 18 Day 20 Eastern Townships in the Rain

For the first time on this trip we were impacted by weather, in this case rain. The day started off overcast and drizzling in Montreal and continued throughout the rest of the day, finally settling into a steady rain as the day progressed.

The whole aim of this day was to take a tour down to the Eastern Townships, an area about 100 kilometres outside Montreal, down towards the USA border. Robyn has become a fan of the Louise Penny Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels by Louise Penny over the past few years and wanted to have a look around the area. In addition, our friend Lucy Sussex, who is co-writing a biography of early Australian crime writer Mary Fortune, was interested in seeing photos of the area around Knowlton, where Fortunes was born and where her father worked on bridge construction.

We were all rather tired from the previous night and so headed off a bit later than expected. But it was a Sunday, and we were on holiday, so we weren’t that fussed by it all. Henry had booked a car using his car sharing scheme so we all piled into that and headed off, getting a look at Lac Brome on the way in order to try to pick up some tourist maps of the area.

The rain was settling in when we got to Knowlton so a wander around town, followed by a light lunch in cafe seemed in order. As usual our accents caught the attention of another cafe patron who enquired as to what we were doing in the area. When we explained about the Penny novels and the Fortune connection she noted that Louise Penny herself was known to visit this exact cafe for lunch on days like this, and would very well have been able to answer the Fortune questions. Unfortunately she was currently in London on a book tour.

Pictures were taken all over town, and Renee found a shop there that had just the right type of hanging glass lamp cover she had been looking for. Success on a couple of fronts.

We then wandered along to the nearby Monastery of Saint-Benout-du-Lac and then headed back to Montreal.

Robyn and I had an early flight out of Montreal the next day for Calgary so Henry helped us lug our bags down the stairs for a last time – still no sign of cat number two – and then we got dropped off at the Comfort Inn a few kilometres from Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport. We hadn’t seemed to have done a lot but we were still both very tired.

North America 2022 : Saturday September 17 Day 19 Montreal Market and Dinner

It was another slow day in Montreal as we got up rather late and chatted over breakfast while deciding on what to do with the rest of the day. Renee and Henry told us they had two cats, though one was not seen throughout the three days of our visit. Even putting out food wasn’t enough to tempt it out into the world where unknowns were lurking. Each morning we’d get a report of where the “other” cat was lurking that day, usually under their bedcovers somewhere. Henry did send me a photo some time after we’d gone to show that the second cat was not imaginary. I’m not sure I’m convinced even now.

Prior to leaving Australia I’d bought myself an eSim mobile phone plan following Henry’s suggestion but seemed to be having some sort of trouble with it while I was in Montreal, I couldn’t seem to connect to the internet at all. Meanwhile, Robyn’s phone card – the sim that we had purchased from T-Mobile in Chicago that was supposed to be good for both the USA and Canada – was dropping in and out with no discernible pattern. I played around with it a bit to see if there were any settings that needed to be switched and something I did seemed to work. Mine, however, was being a nuisance.

I had purchased a standard plan of 200 minutes of voice (something I figured I was never going to use) and 10Gb of data. That seemed like enough when I was sitting at home. But I had forgotten that I have about 50Gb of data a month on my Australian mobile plan and so tend to completely forget that clicking on a video link somewhere and then moving on without stopping it properly tends to chew through data at a very fast rate. That and the fact that I had been running the phone as a GPS assistant in the car for a week probably contributed to the discovery that my 10Gb data had been eaten away, well before I thought it would. I needed a top-up on the plan, so I grabbed another 10Gb and figured it would all be updated later that day.

By the time I’d wasted an hour or so on all of this travel housekeeping it was off to the local produce market. Henry tends to shop there on his own during the week when it is less crowded and we were unsure if a Saturday late morning was going to be a good time. As it turned out it was fine; nothing like Melbourne’s Victoria Market at a similar time of week.

There is something very soothing about wandering around fresh food markets of this type, looking at what people are buying, selling and eating. I was rather surprised by the number of chillies and peppers on sale. Not so such the garlic, cheese and bread as we were in the province of Quebec with its heavy French influence. Some of the stalls reminded me of similar setups in the Budapest main market, which seemed to be full of chillies, garlic and salami.

We had a spot of lunch where I got completely confused by the description of the tacos on offer – was that one or two for $9.00? Did it come with salsa? In the end I opted to also pick up a grilled sausage in a bun with charcoal cooked bell pepper to top things off. I saw one stall holder selling grilled sausages wrapped only in paper! Surely an abomination.

Robyn had been the look-out for some maple syrup since arriving in Canada and Henry and Renee convinced her that the nest syrup, the darkest, was to be found in the eastern art of the country, namely Montreal. She found what she wanted and picked up two decent sized cans for a price that would be ridiculously cheap in Australia.

We then decided to walk home through some the local neighbourhoods, getting an idea of what Montreal did on a Saturday afternoon. Basically they closed off whole streets and turned them into local markets and pedestrian-friendly areas. It seemed a reasonable thing to do. There were a lot of people out and about, probably catching as much sunshine as they could before the winter weather started to move in.

It was also intriguing to note the number of murals painted onto the ends of rows of apartments. Henry has been finding a lot of these and posting them to his FaceBook page so I was aware they existed but it was very interesting to see what sort of styles the locals were using.

Robyn and I took Renee and Henry out to a swanky restaurant that night as a way of partially thanking them for putting us up during our stay in Montreal. And the night was still warm enough to stroll home afterwards.

North America 2022 : Friday September 16 Day 18 Downtown Montreal

Renee was working from home on this Friday so we waited until she was ready before heading out ourselves to have a walk around the Montreal Downtown area with Henry. We were looking for a fairly easy day after the hiking in Quebec City and that’s what we got.

The first introduction to Montreal life really came the night before when we had the pleasure of climbing the front steps to Renee and Henry’s apartment. They were more prominent in the light of day. They look rather dangerous but the steps were wide enough and with the lime (?) green of Henry’s paint they were easy enough to navigate. It is the task of the apartment owners to keep them clear of snow during winter and to lay down a covering that makes climbing them easier when they get icy. All of which is a civic requirement way out of our level of experience.

We received an introduction to the Montreal underground system and its reminders of the Paris Metro with the rubber tyres on the trains – they were still rather noisy – and the wide platforms. The system isn’t extensive but Henry had two within 5-10 minutes walk of the apartment. A couple of stops down the line and we were in Montreal’s downtown area.

A walk around town for a while was followed by a quick dip into an exhibition of World Press Photos and lunch and a beer at a local brew pub.

After that we had a look through Montreal’s Museum of Archaeology and History, which was a wonderful museum giving us a good quick lesson in Canadian history.

Home, wine, food and then bed.

North America 2022 : Thursday September 15 Day 17 West to Montreal

Our third day in Quebec City was originally intended to be spent on the Morrin Centre tour, but, as noted in the previous couple of blog entries, that wasn’t possible as the tours didn’t (re)start until Friday September 16. So we decided to do something a bit different and went for a walk. This time around the outer, and lower, parts of the old town. We ran into the crowds streaming off a German cruise liner that was docked on the river. They must have spread out all over the city, or maybe half the ship hadn’t decided to get up as yet, as it didn’t seem that crowded where we were. Not as bad as our day in Tallinn in 2017 when the whole city was completely swamped with cruise ship tour groups filling up the street and not buying anything. On that occasion we just found ourselves a nice restaurant with tables on the street, bought ourselves something light to eat with a few drinks and just sat and watched the world go by. This time we were able to mingle without much difficulty.

Remembering our long haul up to the top of the Old Town a few days earlier we decided on taking the funicular to save our legs. At $4 each for about 30 seconds of ride time it was worth it.

And then it was just a matter of killing time until the mid-afternoon train from Quebec City to Montreal. It was the usual stuff: wandering the streets and looking into shops. We grabbed a spot of lunch and wandered back to the hotel to pick up our bags.

The stroll down to the railway station was short – only about 500 metres – and flat. The Canadian Railway company had this rule that no bag could be over 23kg, which didn’t make a lot of sense to us. It wasn’t as if the train would worry about an extra kilo or two, and, as there was to be no baggage service, we had to move our bags ourselves. In any event we shuffled some wine bottles around and evened everything out.

The trip was completely uneventful and we arrived some 20 minutes early. The arrangement was that we would be staying with our friends Henry Balen and Renee Sieber for the three days we would be in Montreal, and Henry had offered to come pick us up. All of that was achieved and we later settled in for a meal of baked red snapper and lots of wine.

Thank you presents were given, and discussions were had, all of which are now forgotten. It was good night.

 North America 2022 : Wednesday September 14 Day 16 Up and Down in Quebec City

On our second full day in Quebec City we decided to seek the more appropriate option of taking an Uber from the hotel to the upper level of the Old Town.

Robyn specifically wanted to have a look at the Morrin Centre, a cultural centre for English speakers. When we got there it was shut. The sign on the front and the information on their website had led us to believe that it would be open, but it wasn’t to be. Our original, and preferred plan was to take a tour of the building, and that wasn’t an option either, as staff shortages had put a stop to them. We discovered later that the tours were due to start on Friday September 16, the day after we left. Sometimes travel experiences are just a matter of timing, either good or bad.

Having some time to kill we took a walk around past Parliament House and down some city streets, looking into shops, checking out restaurants and generally just passing the time.

The main item on the agenda for the day was a Food Walking Tour starting at 11:30am. This tour was tighter in its walking schedule and lasted about two and a half hours. Our guide was a bright and cheerful university student earning extra money as a your guide. We started with a very strange deconstructed shepherd’s pie, followed by French onion soup, maple taffee, a croissant, another poutine (but the best we’ve had so far) and we finished off with a half measure of gin and maple biscuits.

The bunch of people on the walking tour was the usual mixture of Americans and Canadians, and it was here that we realised that we were yet to meet any Australians on this trip, other than the ones we already knew at the convention in Chicago. This seemed a little strange to us as we normally run into Australians everywhere. It only takes a word or two for us to realise we have fellow travellers, or they recognise my hat, but not this trip. Not one. We had certainly chatted with Canadians who had been to Australia, or always wanted to go there, but no natives in sight.

We had walked past the Morrin Centre near the end of our food tour and noticed that it was now open, so decided to take the opportunity to check it out. As suspected they had been having troubles with staffing, like everywhere else. We only got the chance to have a look at the library section, and that would have to suffice for Robyn to be satisfied.

Another long stroll across Old Town and the ramparts took us to the Fairmont Hotel – reportedly the most photographed hotel in the whole of North American – where we stopped for a drink, before wandering back to the hotel.

We tried the hotel’s restaurant suggestion again only for us to find they were fully booked. We cut our losses and ate across the street from our hotel.

North America 2022 : Tuesday September 13 Day 15 In and Around Quebec City

Once again we had decided to purchase the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tickets. Our hotel was able to sell us a ticket for the bus and pointed us down the street where we found the requisite stop. Ten minutes later we were headed off on a loop around the Old Town of Quebec City.

The bus took us past all the major points of interest – the Plains of Abraham, Parliament House (no flags flying at half-mast here), the Cathedral, shopping streets and parks – as well as taking for a very brief pass over the river to the city of Levis on the other side.

Canada is supposed to be a bi-lingual country but here was no pretense here, everything was in French. There was the occasional commercial sign in English but all public signs were in French only.

We dropped off the bus when it got to the Tourist Information office. After that we wandered around the city for a few hours, finding interesting street sculpture, looking into shops from some narrow alleys, wandering along the top of the ramparts above the St Lawrence River, and generally getting a feel for the place.

By mid-afternoon we’d had enough and the calves were aching from the pounding they’d received that day, on top of the long, hard climb the night before. We grabbed the h-o-h-o bus again and did another loop, getting off at the hotel for a rest.

The hotel recommended a French Bistro a few minutes’ walk down the street so we headed off in that direction noting that all the eating places along the way were shut. As was the Bistro when we got there; Tuesdays in Quebec. We wandered around a bit further and found a street with three or four places all open and decided on a Vietnamese/Thai place which turned out to be both reasonable and reasonably cheap.

It was a slow walk home before an early night, something that was becoming more and more common on this trip.