mychai's Diaryland Diary

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Day #12: The food! My God, the Food!

If Montreal didn't have any other redeaming qualities other than its food, I would still suggest you come visit this town just for that reason alone.

Nicole and I went to a restaurant tonight called Restaurant le Bourlingueur. It was right across the street from the Polish restaurant I talked about in my last entry, and boy was it tasty... and cheap!!

There is a deal common among restaurants up here called "table-d'hote," meaning that you get soup or salad, the entree, dessert and coffee for one low price.

For example: tonight's meal for me was a bowl of cream of spinach soup with bread and butter; roast pork with an apple sauce, baked carrots, and boiled new potatoes; and cheesecake and coffee. I was absolutely stuffed when I finished up my meal. When the ticket came, I about fell out of my chair. I was indebted to the restaurant for a whopping $12.55. If you do all of the conversions, that's a mere $8.41 American smackeroos. Nicole got a salad, duck with "some kind of glaze, gravy sauce thing" (her words), the carrots with potatoes, and a walnut cake. All for less than $15 Canadian, which is trite less than $10 American.

Yowsers!

Yessiree... Come to Montreal and eat like a king for peasant's pay. (Wow... I just came up with that. I should be an ad exec!)

I had a fun day today. I left Nicole behind and I spent the day wandering through different neighborhoods. That isn't saying that I wouldn't have had fun if she wasn't with me. But... err... you know.

The metro here is quite good and goes through all kinds of different neighborhoods. Much of central Montreal is a healthy mix of Anglophones and Francophones. If you don't know French in downtown, you can still get by. But go east and you either speak French or don't talk. I spent much of my time today in those neighborhoods. If your reasoning skills are up to par, then you have guessed how much time I spent talking to locals.

What I did was just pick random places to get off of the subway and walk around until I got completely lost. I went to places that probably 90% of tourists never go -- the neighborhood streets, the small corner convenience stores, the neighborhood parks, etc. Had the weather not been cold and rainy, I'm guessing I would have seen more people. But things were pretty deserted.

I did see a few small churches and other types of buildings that had some good character. I also took a few pictures of some of the streets with the more colorful apartments dotting the sides.

I had hoped to get helplessly lost just to present myself with some cheap (free) thrils, but every time it seemed like I would never return home, a metro station would end up being right around the corner. Bummer.

When I finnally made it back to the hotel, I was pretty soaked and cold. I warmed up with a shower before we went out to the yummy dinner.

And now I am writing a diary entry. Neat how that works, huh?

We leave tomorrow for the last leg of our Canadian travels. Our train leaves for Quebec City at 8:30 in the morning. I certainly hope we have better luck than last time. We already have our tickets. All I have to do is get my refund. ("Yay for Nicole" -- her words).

("Thanks... appreciate it." -- her words again)

("You $%^$ &*@!#" -- you guessed it)

This, of course, is the last leg of her trip, but I still have a while left to go. I will spend a week in New York, then I go to Chicago where Best Friend Lisa will pick me up. I will spend a week in Lafayetee, Indiana, until I go home back to Columbia for my April Air Force meeting. I will stay there until the following Thursday so I can spend some quality time with Air Force Bud Justin and other friends. Then it is Nashville, Tennessee, for three days with an old high school friend. Then, finally, I will end up in Picayune, Mississippi.

But that may not be it. My dad -- an oceanographer -- is spending all of May in Panama City, Florida, performing all kinds of experiments in the warm water. Guess where my ass is going to be...

Well... if I have any money left over after all of this travelling.

Ok. That about wraps it up for tonight. I need to pack and do some more reading. I already finished one book on this trip so far: "MASH". It's the book that prompted the movie that prompted the TV show. It was pretty good, though its author probably won't be nominated for any Nobel prizes in literature.

Right now I am reading two books. One is by and about Matt Drudge and is... ok. He uses a lot of contemporary literature devices that I'm not too fond of. Plus, he barely graduated high school and never quite made it to college. So... yeah.

My other book is -- and don't laugh -- "Peter Pan" by J.M. Barrie. I'm reading this for the same reason I read "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." I've seen the movie hundreds a few times, and I would like to see how the original story compares. So far, I'm quite impressed, though I am having a hard time with some of the period's British wording for things.

So, for all of you ladies out there, I'll sign off tonight with a quote from "Peter Pan" that you will all like. Sleep well!

"Wendy," he continued, in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist, "Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys."