We got in kinda late-ish, so we just left the car with the valet ($26 a day...yikes!), checked in, and headed to our room to hit the hay. We stayed at the Omni Mont Royal, which was really nice. We signed up for some guest perks club and got free WIFI for our entire stay as well as two beverages each every morning (grapefruit juice and coffee for me, OJ and coffee for Dustin). It was well worth forking over an email address to the spammers that I'm sure will eventually get us.
Before I get into the details of the trip, I should explain a little about "fake Paris". Dustin came up with the term because nobody speaks English. I knew that Quebec had a lot of French influence and that many people spoke French. I had no idea that that's all they want to speak or that it's considered rude to speak English to someone on the first go. Basically, we'd go to a store, restaurant, etc. and they would assume we speak French. They'd rattle off some phrase that I couldn't quite nail down, and then we'd flash them our sweetest 'we're-a-dumb-American' smile and say, whatever we needed to. In English. So then the person would switch to perfect English. It was strange because very few people had thick French accents when they spoke English. In fact, they had the Canadian accents with the funny "O's". I few times I would apologize and say that I didn't speak French -- in French. It was the first time since High School that I felt like taking a foreign language wasn't a total waste of my time. It was also handy because all of the traffic signs in Quebec are in French. It definitely made things more challenging. For the most part I could pick out enough words to get the idea. Only one time would someone NOT speak English to me. I said to her, "Je suis desole, maint je ne parle pas Francais" (I'm sorry, but I don't speak French), and she just gave me a stern look and kept speaking in French. It was scary... I was trying to order another croissant and I almost got frustrated and walked out without it. Thankfully, pointing did the trick.
On Saturday, Dustin has a session to attend in the morning so I slept in. It was blissful. Not only did I sleep in, but I was also able to sleep through the night. I love Henry, but I sure didn't miss him during the nights on this trip. When I finally got up, I went walking around the city. I ended up making my way to a book store called Chapters and had a very authentic Starbucks vanilla latte for breakfast. I sat in the cafe and browsed through books on Montreal. Being too cheap to spend $20 on the book, I simply took notes on the things I wanted to see and the places where I thought we should eat. After that, I browsed through a few shops and then headed back to the hotel, stopping at a french bakery called Au Pain in order to get myself a(nother) croissant. It was a super-rough morning, so I needed to take a nap. Also blissful. I dragged myself out of bed (seriously, I wanted to sleep the whole day) and went to do some more tourist-y things. I'm glad I did because I went to the Marie Reine du Monde Basilique. It was a beautiful Catholic basilica.
I snapped this picture quickly and then decided I should put away the camera. There were several people inside praying and I didn't feel comfortable walking around taking pictures while they were trying to have a moment. I don't know much about Catholicism (Nancy, can you tell me about this??), but I was surprised at how many candles were lit. I think people come in and light candles when they have prayers that they need to bring attention to. Although this basilica was impressive, it had NOTHING on the one I saw later in the trip.
I met up with Dustin later in the day and we went to do a few things together. We tried to find the underground mall, but we were unsuccessful. We did find this fun little place. I think they are apartments. There were also little shops and a restaurant here. I like this picture because it's kinda hard to tell that there's a huge black marble fountain; that's what is catching the reflection of the building. It just had a thin stream of water flowing over it.
We also found another little bakery-type shop and shared this:
It's a peanut butter, hazelnut/chocolate, maple syrup crepe. It looks like a mess, but it was delicious. We also shared a chocolate croissant and a gross "chai" latte. It was from a Lipton teabag, so it hardly counts.
One of the restaurants that I passed on my walks looked fun, so we ate there. It had an outdoor seating area, which we love, so we snatched up two seats for a late dinner.
We knew that we had to try Poutine while we were here. It's a food that's specific to the region, so we gave it a shot. It is french fries, cheese curds and gravy. It was good, but I'm fairly certain I'm going to live a shorter life because I ate it.
For our actual dinner, I had a gigantic salmon salad and Dustin had the house pizza.
We waddled back to our hotel after this meal.
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