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.