Montreal 2007

 

I recently took a trip to Montreal as a needed break from the daily grind.   Nikki has family up there and her aunt invited us for her wedding.  And what a wedding it was!  Of all weddings, this one was the swankiest.  That’s a good thing!  An escape from Wong’s King and Legin.  However, let me go over this trip chronologically….

Wednesday, Aug 15: Flight was at 6am!  Nikki booked the ticket for her and I as well as her grandparents.  6am is too early for me.  I’ve always been good at waking up early when required.  However, this story began the wrong way.  I WOKE UP AT 5AM.  I went to sleep at 1am and had set my alarm at 3am.  I slept past the alarm and had broken my promise to Nikki that I would be at her house at 4am. 

At 5am, I woke up and immediately went to search for my phone.  It was in the other room.  Had it been in the same room with me, Nikki would have woken me up.  Idiot!  Once I located my phone, I saw 18 missed calls from one number.  Uh oh!  Then…..”KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!!”  It was Nikki!  I was still in my boxers when I let her in.  “What the HELL are you doing?  How could you do this to me?” 

I’ve never let anyone down this badly in my life.  Her grandparents were up at 3am and ready to go she said.  To make a long substory short, we missed our flight.  Fortunately, the airline found us another flight at 1pm.  This is more to my liking however it’s hard to overcome the lack of responsibility.  I can brush it off it I was the only victim but I had three other people that were affected by my royal blunder.  The bottom line is that we will be heading into Montreal at 12 Midnight instead of 6pm.

 Once we landed in Montreal, I met Nikki’s family at the airport.  Nice pepople but I can’t help but think I dragged an old man out to the airport at midnight.  They were all in good spirits though.  As the rest of the group shuffled into the family car, I had rented my own car for our pending trip to Niagara Falls.  I found a great deal on a luxury sports car at Hertz via Expedia.  Well the luxury sports car was a 2007 white BWM 328i with gps system.  WOW!  We’re travelling in luxury.

 On the way to the house, I had tried to use the gps but it did not detect the street of interest.  Oh well, I had printed out driving directions beforehand.  I’m good with directions, I can do this.  Fastforward 5 minutes later: DAMN!  The streets are named in French and it’s hard to remember.  West is Ouest therefore, W equals O in French.  We did get lost and we went further than we needed but my sense of direction kicked in and we found our way to the house at about 1:15am.  What a day!  Sleep…..

 Thursday, Aug 16: I woke up at 6am and roused Nikki up at the same time.  Our trip to Niagara starts now!  It’s a 700km drive, which is about 7hrs.  I was determined to get there at 2pm.  We had our plans!  I entered the address of the hotel in the gps and we were off.  The route was to head southwest down into NY through Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo then head across the border once again to get to Niagara Falls, Ontario. 

 The BMW was a dream ride.  The service centers (aka Rest Areas) were wonderful.  These service centers are spaced about 40km apart from each other and at each SC, there is an indoor rest area with fast foods like Wendy’s, Tim Horton’s, Subway as well as a small arcade for the kids.  Very clean.  I believe this is where the tax money goes to and it made it worthwhile to stop and stretch for a bit.

 With all the breaks, we got to Niagara at 3pm.  A great time.  We checked into the hotel first; it was a bit further away from the Falls than I would have liked but it was quiet and peaceful…no pesky tourists!  The hotel room was great because it had an indoor jet tub next to the bed.  As the French say: Oh La La!

After a bit of rest at the hotel, we made our way down to Niagara Falls.  What a beautiful view.  It’s breathtaking, magnificent, grand!  The sheer size is something to admire.  I looked at one fall and it’s actually really cool to see a waterfall with the backdrop of the city skylines right behind it.  We took plenty of pictures and then we headed up to the Skylon Tower for dinner.  The Skylon Tower is a tower that is about 520 ft up in the air, overlooking the falls.  We ate in a revolving dining lounge that continuously makes one full revolution over an hour’s time.  Dinner was good but service was shoddy.  We got to see the Falls illuminated at night.  Beautiful.  This ended our second day of the trip.

Friday, Aug 17:We finally got a chance to sleep in until 9am!  Yay!  We had planned to get a buffet breakfast and then head down to the Maid of the Mist boat ride into the Falls.  Instead of the buffet breakfast, we elected to stop along the carnival street, Clifton Hills, at the foot of the fall for breakfast.  Parking is funny at the Falls.  One spot close to the Falls can be $18/day parking while if you drove a little bit further, it’s only $5/day.  It’s about a 5 minute walk difference.

I recommend the Maid of the Mist boat ride.  It’s about a 20 min boat ride that takes you into the Horseshoe Falls where you get sprayed silly by the mist.  The tour gives you a raincoat, of course.  The best view of the Falls is on this boat.  What a ride!

After the boat ride, it was time to head out.  It was about 2pm already!  We needed to get back into Montreal by tonight so we can attend the wedding tomorrow.  The original plan was to go to Rochester, NY and check out the Seabreeze theme park.  I heard wonderful things about that but our timing was bad and we still have quite a drive ahead of us.  We decided to take the scenic route and go to Toronto on the way back home.

Upon arriving at Toronto, we checked out the one of the 7 wonders of the modern world…the CN Tower.  The tallest standing tower in the world, it defined the city quite well as were driving in.  To my amazement, Niagara Falls is not one of the seven natural wonders of the world.  We thought we’d cover two wonders in one day.  Oh well.

Outside of the CN Tower, we didn’t know what to do in Toronto.  We were in downtown and asked a lady where Chinatown was.  I heard the Asian community in Toronto is quite bit.  We weren’t disappointed upon arriving at Chinatown.  It was a long stretch of road where produce street stands, knock-off watches, pre-DVD released movies lined the sidewalk.   Nikki and I went from shop to shop to browse and eventually bought 6 peacock feathers for $2 CAN for home decorations.  So the next time you come into our house, you will see peacock feathers and you’ll know where they came from. 

After eating at a dumpling shop, we were back on the road to go home.  I must have gone super fast because I got home an hour earlier than the gps has originally routed.  We got back at 12 midnight and drank some champagne before bed.  I love the French!

 Saturday, Aug 18:  The day of the wedding!  The lucky bride is Nikki’s aunt.  Legend says she’s 34 and a very successful financial analyst in Montreal.  The groom is Australian and is a very successful entrepreneur.  He is 39. 

The morning ceremony was held at Mont Royal park; an urban park that’s like Mt. Tabor in Portland only within downtown Montreal.  I talked to a few guests and they told me that someone would have to be pretty “heavy” in order to rent out space in Mont Royal.  Indeed, it was a nice setting.  It was in the top floor of a fully enclosed glass building.  Champagne abound with a couple of harp and flute musicians to the left of the stage.  Beautiful. 

I later found out that dinner reception is at the Contemporary Art Museum de Montreal.  Wow!  This is swanky.  There was a bus to shuttle people from the park ceremony to downtown.  Upon entering the art museum, the guests picked up a card with their name on it to identify which table they will be sitting at.  After going up a flight of stairs and turning 4 corners through the exhibit, we were there; the outside garden.  With radiated heat lamps, it was a comfortable setting.  150 people max.  The meal was excellent and the speeches were good.  Definitely not an Asian wedding!

After dinner, it was off to the basement for a nightclub-like room.  This is where they hired a band that played only 80’s music.  Sweet!  Nikki and I boogied a bit and had drinks from the hosted bar.  There was a buffet at midnight for all the partiers but Nikki and I were tired and had left just prior to midnight.  What a party it was.

Sunday, Aug 19: This was our only day to fully explore Montreal.  We started by going to Rue St. Catherine.  This street is similar to fifth avenue in NY; it was a long stretch of high end shops.  The parking system is interesting in Montreal.  Each space on the street has a number associated with it.  In case you run out of time and you’re still shopping, you can go pay at any parking kiosk and enter your parking space number.  No need to run back to your car to plug the meter.  It helps.

After scoring a skinny, narrow blue tie from French Connection, my rock band drummer look is not complete.  I have the shades, the skinny suit w/ skinny tie.  =)  We spent half the day on St. Catherine’s looking for the underground market but were disappointed that it was just an underground shopping mall.  Maybe we were given bad info.

After St. Catherine, we headed down to the pier at Bonsecure Market.  This is like a grand Saturday market with lots of people.  Nikki was determined to get a gift for her friends at this jewelery stand.  She spent close to an hour overall looking over stuff.  The girl attending the stand was randomly smiling at me; hinting at how tiring my role as a BF really is.  Eventually, Nikki had settled on something but she had a large US bill that the attendant could not give change for.  Oh well.  Next time I guess.  We weren’t about to pay the ATM fee to pull out money. 

That led us to a great shop down the street.  It’s this home store filled with french novelties.  We got a lot of items with a Rooster theme.  The Chinese believed the rooster brings luck into the kitchen and we were going that route.  We ended the day by trying out sushi in Montreal….YUM.  We came to this shop where we gave an order and were told to come back in hour.  Wow!  That’s a first.

We came back and it was worth it.  The big rolls and the rice paper rolls were good!  Our trip can’t be any better.

Monday, Aug 20:We were at the airport at 6:30am for our 8:30am departure.  While going through the security scanner, I heard the lady at the x-ray machine whisper, “is that a chicken?”  LOL.  Yes I stuffed the chicken statue in my carry on bag.  While up ahead, a guy was asking Nikki if the peacock feathers were real.  It was wacky.

We made it home at 2pm Monday.  Time to sleep.

Check out the photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/vinhdnguyen/Canada2007