(Day 6) "My Fellow Quebecors"

Bonjour! At least, that is what I will be saying shortly to Montreal. Our time in Canada City has come to a close and this morning we had nothing to do but laze about, head to Sephora one last time, and buy bus tickets we won’t use before calling a cab to transport us over to Via Rail, our gateway to Quebec. We were going to be economical and take public transport, but that would have meant lugging our bags a few blocks, waiting for the bus, riding the bus, and then getting off a few blocks from the station, followed by more lugging. Gruelling, right? We walked out from the lobby of the Westin, punched the giant red button that said “Taxi” and less than a minute later we were comfortably seated and on our way. I put in on my expense claim.



We were a bit early so we mooched some WiFi as it was temporarily free due to inconsistent connectivity issues. It was, again, not long before we were boarding and whisking through the countryside of Quebec – Je mais souviens!







The shinkansen it wasn’t, but the countryside looked much the same. On trains in Canada, Japan, England, and France, the blah countryside still always looks blah. We caught up on our Facebooking, emailing, blog-reading and the like with sketchy connection the duration of the trip. I wasn’t about to pay $13 a day at the Westin so I was a bit ‘Net-starved.


Ooh, lookie! Bonjour Montreal!

The Via Rail station was connected to Bonaventure metro station so we hauled our cookies up and down a billion stairs (HELLO MONTREAL, HAVE YOU HEARD OF ESCALATORS?) before arriving at Georges-Vanier, our home stop.



Thankfully it was only a two-block walk to our B&B, strangely titled “Repos & Manna”. We lurked in the entrance of the townhouse (the door was open) before running into Tony, the Italian proprietor. He was a serious guy who plays tennis and used to be a stockbroker. He told us Montreal was the greatest city on earth to which we both stared blankly. Riight. We dropped our junk off and decided to try a kaitenzushi sushi place on St. Catherines for dinner. Off we trudged.


We be stayin’ in the ‘hood.



The restaurant was called ‘Odaki” (DUH) and so far everything reminded me of ‘Kill Bill’ with their yellow and black colours. It wasn’t cheap at $32, but we love all-you-can-eat sushi. So we did.






After the tray above, I thought I was going to explode rice and raw fish everywhere. Also, I never thought looking at the picture would ever make me feel hungry for sushi ever again…but I’m okay now. Wanna go for sushi?

St. Catherines is THE place to be in Montreal. We decided to walk down it until we felt the need to turn around and encountered many sights while doing so.






B looks kind of high here because the smell from Ben& Jerry’s was absolutely intoxicating.




That sign says “Super Sexe” – can you see it? Montreal is a hotbed for scandalous establishments.



We encountered cathedrals, sex stores and cabarets, a few clothing stores and some loud drunk girls. Wild times in Montreal on a Thursday night.

After kind of searching for dessert and coming up empty, we arrived back at our homestead ready for a nappy-time. Tomorrow is Cirque du Soleil and sightseeing, so let’s try to sleep in our little 10 sq ft corner of the basement and forget our cares.