Mon T-Real (CraBlogged)

I've always wanted to go to France, mostly to attempt to speak terrible french to the locals. That is, I don't think the language itself is terrible, merely that the way I would parley it would be. Terrible that is. But since France is pretty far away and about a year off for serious consideration, it was decided that we'd take a short jaunt up to Montreal during Father's day. Just the two of us.

First thing we did was take a stroll through China town and then into Old town, where instead of finding old people we found old people and old buildings, as well as young people and medium-aged people. Some nice medium-aged person was kind enough to snap this shot for us, as if we took this just to prove that we were there. We were there, man. At some random fountain in the middle of some crazy place on a crazy planet filled with people who build weird fountains in random places.

We stayed at a Hostel, which is at least close in spelling to a Hotel, except for that pesky S in the middle. That pesky S, while it saves you 75% of the cost of the same without him, also means you're "s"leeping in a room with "s"even other people"s". All part of the grand adventure, of course! It really wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. The people were friendly and french-speaking, and the breakfast was free, free-spirited, french, and full of various breads and jams. We eventually moved into another room there that was only a four-person room, and we met two nice Irish lasses who were polite and friendly even though every other word of their mouthes was "fookin".

Montreal is a strange place. The language law of the town forbids any posts, signs, notes, or advertisement to be in any other language than AT LEAST french. Woe be to he whom doth post a sign in english or otherwise, sans french-oui! All the waiters, cashiers, clerks, and street beggars first attempted communication in french - maybe that's a law too? "Yon he must doth speakest in french first when he doth partake to ask the favors of one for alms." Probably in there. I broke my rule and attempted french communication back at people, and was happy that they did not break my face or other body parts in turn. Instead, most would usually laugh a good-natured laugh, a laugh with all the gusto of someone suddenly remembering that it is this man, this Harry who may or may not be tipping this eve. Hoh Hoh.

The few times it was almost imperative I understood and spoke french, I failed miserably. Mostly this was when someone in the Hostel would knock on our door and start speaking rapid slang at me, then hide their amusement when they realized for 30 seconds I was attempting to translate their words.

In any case, Montreal is indeed a cosmopolitan city, which I learned all about at our first museum. Chataeu-Ramzey I believe it was were. Here's what I remember, and please don't write a paper based on this faulty misremembered information. Apparently France came along and decided that the Americas was where it was going to be "at", so they sent some explorers and colonists to found Quebec, with Montreal being a central focus in that idea. Then the English came along and slaughtered many and took major capitals and converted them, but THEN the Americans came and kicked the english out, maybe, but then the english came back or something, and then france got their act together - and so on and so forth. Because it was held by a bunch of different people a bunch of different times, you get a mish-mash of cultural delights. Also in this museum we learned two very important things. One, you can get hung for "dueling", as it is a grave offense. Below, see a picture of me in their neat display on how their legal system was pretty ridiculously awesome, for example, being found guilty first and having to prove innocence, even while being tortured to confess your crime. See also, below, a fun way to die - sitting to death in a steel cage.

And more importantly, two, there is such a thing in this world as a spit-dog. Basically, you put a dog in THIS THING, and it runs around which turns your cooking spit. That's what I call a hot dog! Funny aside, I was trying to read all the french signs, and one of them was, "Chien... dog..... Chaud... hot.... what the hell does 'dog-hot' mean? Man, today it is just 'dog-hot'! .. oh... hot dog... right... it's a restaurant..." Anyway -- spit dog!

Seriously though, that's awesome.

That night we decided to spend a few hours doing the cafe thing, you know, where you sip a cup of coffee for two hours while chatting and playing cards? So we get to this place, and just from the sign you know it's going to be great.

And we get in there, and say, screw it instead of coffee let's just get a pitcher of margarita, since it was right there on the front menu. We order, and the guy says, "Ah non non, desole, you cannot just drink that, zees ees not a bar. You need order food for that." So we say screw it and just go back to our coffee idea, which is thankfully OK and doesn't require a 10$ baguette to order along with it. While waiting we break out a deck of cards to play war, and he comes back over and he gets all angry and says that there's no card games allowed, nor chess, nor anything. And we're like, dewd, comment dit-on "wtf"?

Lots of museums were seen; my favorite being the museum of fine arts, which surprisingly was free! How nice of them. We saw some fancy picassos, a neat display of that funky, funky 70's home decor, but my favorite was a sculpture of someone way ahead of his times. About a hundred years before Leonard Nimoy existed, this man captured his essence.

He even got the vulcan neck pinch in there! Sure, it's technically some guy fighting off the devil, but the similarities are uncanny.

Better than any museum, was the Montreal Garden that we saw on Saturday. Absolutely beautiful. At first we thought it was just a medium-sized greenhouse, which housed seven distinct sections of plants and flowers. They had everything from arid cactus adventure rooms, all the way to japanese bonsai gardens. And inbetween, tropical rainforests as well as a beautiful orchid display. Here's a few we snapped.

Maryl's favorite type of orchid.

Greenhouse.

Beautiful Maryl being assaulted by metal chocobos.

Orchid display.

Look at that tiny pineapple! It's so tiny I could squash it with my foot which is in the picture for size reference!

They also had a section for kids which explained the process that plants go through in order to reproduce. It's so horrific I've blocked it from my memory. From what I can remember, though, it involved shrinking down some girl named "mac", and you as well, where you get to follow her on her adventures trying to find her way out of an apple. While there, you'll meet some pretty crazy characters!

I was frightened, and a little confused.

It was pretty crazy scary at the point where they included comics to help better understand the adventure and the process. Ask me about it later if you want to actually see those comics, but they are so hideous that I cannot bring myself to post them here, in polite society. But I will say that it involves "stamen", who's a guy just looking for a little action. He wears sunglasses, a shirt, but no pants.

Ah but the best part of the gardens was the insectorium building... so, so neat. Lots of bugs, alive and dead, the fiercest and the craziest, the most dangerous and the most benign... it had them all. Scorpians, spiders, butterflies that had snake-wings so as to scare off predators... bees and ants and termites. You could actually see the ants - if you reached out, you could grab a swarm of the gardener ants.

They also had.. a display of giant.. and I mean ENORMOUS beetles. Why do such things exist in our world? Why? Just to freak us out? Most definitely.

Way too damn big. Seriously.

But not just greenhouses and insectoriums this Garden, no no no. They had a giant grounds where two love birds could stroll for hours, which we did. Japanese gardens, First nation's gardens, Alpine gardens - and here's one of the Chinese garden. It was beautiful in every sense of the word, especially when we were blessed to chance upon a performance of a chinese erhuist.

Strolling down one of the many paths and turns in the secluded gardens, I proposed that we venture in to see the "medicinal" gardens, which housed everything from Mandrake to Mugwort. To my delight, she accepted, and we were pleased, pleased that the medicinal garden had fun names to the plants which I can't recall now. Foxglove? Fun! And the such.

Ah, Botanical Garden of Montreal, such an engaging delight of sight, aroma, and tranquility. It is a very special place for me, for us that is, one I highly suggest visiting - should you be arm in arm with a loved one... in Montreal.

Elsewise! We stepped into the Notre Dame of Montreal, which is sort of a spin-off of the one in France, and it happened to be just during Sunday morning mass. We walked in and heard ethereal voices singing a hymn, and coupled with the stained glass and candles, it was easy enough to see the appeal many have towards religious sites and religion itself. I guess that's the whole point!