I ❤️ Montreal

 Josh and I are going to stay in Montreal! We are going to live in a walk up brick townhouse with a tall sunflower garden in front. Every morning we’ll choose a different cafe to dip our croissant in our Cortado. He’s going to wear a flat runner cap and sport a mustache to fit in with the stylish men here. I’ll have my hair in a frizzy golf ball 'do, because apparently I have no choice in this humidity. We will only travel by Bixi bikes and we’ll listen to concerts in the parks and sit on patios teeming with talking people late into the night. We’ll watch the cobble stone streets for cats slinking about the tall plants, lit up by twinkling fairy lights.

    I'm not sure how Elsa will get home, she definitely doesn't want to stay. She is nervous that people will notice that she doesn’t speak French. She’s memorized some gibberish “French” and intends to mumble it when someone walks by. She’s identified the French people as the ones wearing stripes and possibly the people with brown hair. I'm not sure what happens if we are exposed as 'Les Anglais', I would imagine it involves pointing and laughing.

    Elsa also is obsessed with the “Iris Galerie” aka the Eyeball store. We looked at our irises in a magnifying mirror that was hung up in Old Montreal. The store makes jewelry out of a scan of your iris. She really wants one. If she has her way our van will be full of staring circles of blue. You can do a family scan and get three eyeballs merged together. No thanks! I offered to take a picture with my phone but it didn't work out very well. They have a location in Quebec City, I have to a day to think of some reasons not to purchase these $90-$300 items.

Highlights

Bixi biking

    We rode Bixi bikes along the St. Lawrence and watched people attempt river surfing in the current. The surfers included a kid, who looked about 14, teaching people. He would catch their board and settle them in the rapid. They would try and stand up with varying degrees of abject failure. Then the next would try. It was very entertaining! It also gave you a clue as to how difficult it was.

The Montreal Biodome

Five ecosystems a few non-human animals, and hundreds of human animals, in each. Josh didn’t know what a Capybara was and we wouldn’t tell him, he had to find out by seeing them. “Am I looking in the trees? Or on the ground” he asked. The Capybara were swimming so I guess it turned out to be the water.

Josh is getting his Master's degree in Montreal Parking

    The signs next to the road have a no parking symbol and then say unexpected things like "6h - 7h Lundi". We figured out that means no parking on Thursdays for an hour. Then each road spot has a numbered blue sign post next to it. You need an App to pay. We will know if he passed by the absence of tickets when we arrive home.

With a Minor in "Bagel"

    If he has a Masters in parking then his minor would be in Bagels. We have sampled so many. Unfortunately the day we did this, there was a torrential rain storm. It pretty much felt someone pouring a bucket of water on you as you walked down the street. My water resistant jacket stopped resisting and just completely surrendered. In the bagel store I took off what felt like a wetsuit to experience frigid air conditioning. It turns out our favourite bagel was in Ottawa! 

Notable Birds n' Mammals

-  Biodome animals: Capybara and Sloth

- Cats

Artistic picture by Elsa