Ridiculously long Montreal trip report.

[rivka]

I'm a little embarrassed about how long this post is. But so much happened! Most of it good!

Friday
Friday morning, we packed ourselves into the rental car and drove to Williamstown, MA to visit kcobweb. Wow, did that ever make for a long day. On the map, Williamstown looked like it was just a hop, skip, and a jump from Albany - but in fact, it was nearly an hour's drive over hilly backroads. Plus, we'd planned to have a late lunch when we got off the New York thruway in Albany, and then there didn't turn out to be a single restaurant for about the next half-hour. All of those people who complain about America being blanketed with fast food restaurants have apparently never visited Troy, NY or points east.

We got to Wiliamstown at about 3:30 in the afternoon. kcobweb and her daughter Elena, who is five weeks older than Alex, met us in the driveway. Our two shy girls hit it off in about five minutes, and spent a few happy hours chasing each other up and down hallways and jumping on beds. Alex also made me read my way through all of Elena's available books. Michael went off to take a nap (he seems to have a sinus infection) and kcobweb and I spent some time catching up and watching the girls. As dinnertime approached, I finally got to meet her husband, who turns out to be a very nice guy. The four of us stayed up late talking and eating eight! kinds! of Christmas cookies! (kcobweb is insane! But a great baker.)

Saturday
We spent some more leisurely time talking and playing in the morning, leaving for Montreal at about 11am. Because, once again, I had underestimated how long the drive was going to be. The drive up through Adirondack State Park was absolutely lovely... but long. I finally broke down and bought Alex her first fast-food kids' meal with a toy in it. (At least it came with milk and fruit instead of fries and a soda.)

We waited about half an hour to cross the border, and were brought up short when the customs agent asked for Alex's birth certificate. We'd checked and found out that the new rules for crossing into the US from Canada didn't go into effect until January 31st, and that we'd still be able to make an oral declaration of citizenship. It had kind of escaped us that Alex would need to present some proof of her identity. Fortunately, the customs agent accepted her medical card and our oral statement that we were both her parents.

We got good and lost coming into Montreal, for reasons which had nothing to do with papersky's directions and everything to do with surprise highway signage. There was one point at which, to continue on route 15, you had to exit twice in quick succession while the main road that had just been 15 turned into something else. I made the first exit at the last minute, but not so with the second one. So we had to do some excitingly complicated navigating, crossing over the scary metal-grate Victoria bridge, and meeting back up with Jo's directions through sheer blind luck.

papersky and rysmiel have the most gorgeous condo. It's two apartments knocked together, connected by the kitchens, so it curves around in a rambling C-shape and feels very large indeed. Lovely wood trim and hardwood floors. And of course, tons and tons of books. They've done something very clever, where their bookcases are stacked two deep and the one behind is raised so you can see the titles over the tops of the books in front. Also, when we arrived, every flat surface in the house was covered with food for that evening's party. OMG the food. If you're ever granted the chance, eat anything papersky puts in front of you.

papersky had a pile of little presents for us, which surprised, touched, and delighted me. The little toy tiger she gave Alex turned out to be just the right size for her castle people to ride on, which made for some fun scenarios. (There was also a British-style otter almost as large as the tiger, and some Santa candy, and a little stuffed lizard that became the favorite of the assortment, and a book.) There was chocolate for Michael and me, and little hand-decorated collage address books, and a tree ornament, and two gorgeous tiny teacups in the Chinese style. She had also put aside an excitingly-ridged cardboard box that one of zorinth's Christmas presents came in, because she thought Alex might find it sort of castle-shaped and good for play. That was the first of many, many signs that papersky is the perfect person to visit if you are a toddler.

hobbitbabe arrived shortly after we did, bearing the exact same hostess gift that we did. It's a good thing people liked it. She also had presents for us! (I wish I'd thought to bring something small for everyone who was going to be there - I felt a little embarrassed.)

Party guests started showing up a little after six. We ate little yummy savory things (I scrambled an egg for Alex, who was shutting down from all the newness), and then Michael and Alex went to bed at the same time. I stayed up until around midnight, eating far more than was wise and chatting with people. It was a lovely relaxed evening.

Sunday
Alex woke about 7am. I brought her into bed with me and we snuggled for a while, an extremely nice thing that we never do at home. Then we emerged, leaving Michael to sleep a bit longer, and had tea and breakfast with papersky and redbird. All through the visit, I really enjoyed those relaxed early hours when not everyone was up yet and there was tea, baked goods, and minor conversation.

We left the house a little after 10 to take a bus and a train to Chinatown (or do they say Ville Chinoise?) for dim sum. It was, put simply, the best dim sum I've ever had. There were seven of us, which meant lots of opportunities to have a little bit of many different things. The best: pork buns made with crisp, flaky French pastry, scallop-and-vegetable dumplings, and large and beautifully non-rubbery pieces of squid. I knew I'd be able to find something for Alex to eat - there's always rice, after all, and she likes spring rolls - but she shocked me by immediately grabbing a fried shrimp dumpling off a plate and eating it. And then eating half of my fried shrimp dumpling. And then a steamed shrimp dumpling. And some crispy noodles and sticky rice. And then, "I want to try the squid," said my daughter who is so picky that she won't eat potatoes. And she ate it. And asked for more. And then more. To preserve her picky reputation, she demanded that I take the breading off it first - but she wound up eating a good-sized portion of squid, including a piece with lots of suckers on it. Huh.

We got back on the train and rode out to the old Stade Olympique, where (among other things) there is now a sort of an indoor zoo called the Biodome. "Zoo" isn't really the right term. The Biodome has four different ecosystem sections - a tropical forest, a northern forest, the St. Lawrence seaway, and the polar regions. Each section has an impressive reconstruction of the featured ecosystem, with plants and animals and birds mixed in together (when possible) in naturalistic settings. The anaconda isn't roaming free in the tropical section, but the monkeys and the ibises are. It was just lovely. And it was fun to have to search for animals, rather than having them separated into clearly-labeled individual habitats.

I've been seeing papersky's visitors talk about the Biodome for years, but because they were all adults it turned out that there were two fine things they never mentioned. There was a large play area set up for children under seven, which apparently has rotating exhibits - when we were there, it was "Visiting the Inuits." There was a hollow log to crawl through; a beaver dam to explore; a pretend river to move stuffed animals and toy canoes along, or to fish in with toy fishing poles; a tent and camping equipment, including a flickering mock campfire to "cook" over; costumes (animal, explorer, and Inuit); animal tracks in the floor... it was marvelous. Alex played there for a long time. Then we went down to a large natural history exploration room in the basement. They had taxidermied animals on display, skulls, antlers, bones, furs, tracks, butterflies and bugs, and various educational/exploratory displays. Alex's favorite was a section with different tracks laid out on the floor. You could follow them to a display case to see what animal made each track.

On the way home, she got quietly sleepier and sleepier until at last she fell asleep in my arms. She hasn't done that for ages. And, um, many pounds. It was difficult to carry her dead weight through a mall and out to the bus, but I managed to keep her asleep until we got off the bus at Jo's house. Sadly, she wasn't able to get back to sleep once we had her in her crib. She seemed to need a little more rest than she got. But we played for a while until it was time to go out for dinner.

We'd decided on sushi for dinner. The food was delicious, but service was slow - for example, Michael's sushi didn't arrive until most of the rest of us were almost done. It also took a long time for Alex's and my food to arrive, which was difficult for her. Various kindly people helped out by donating bits of rice and shrimp to the cause. When our food finally came it was great. I mostly had pieces, but I'd ordered one fancy roll that had tempura scallops, avocado, and cucumber. It was delicious. I'd ordered smoked salmon and shrimp for Alex. She was oddly dubious about the salmon, which she usually loves, but immediately looked at her father's plate when it arrived and announced, "Papa, you don't need three of those." ("Those" being tamago, or omelet.)

It took the restaurant far, far too long and far too many false starts to work out our bills - the result being that we missed the bus and had a fairly long wait in the cold. Poor Michael suffered the most, as he hadn't thought to bring his hat. Alex started to melt down a little - she was frolicking around and fell down, and turned out to have scraped her knee a bit right through her pants. It took some fast talking to keep her relatively cheerful and occupied until our bus came. We put her to bed as soon as we got home (she popped back out at one point with "I forgot to say good night to my friends"), and then stayed up for a while drinking tea (and stronger things) and chatting with redbird, papersky, and hobbitbabe. I got minute amounts of work done on the Slowest Needlework Project in the World.

Monday
Monday morning, after the usual lounging and tea-drinking, redbird heroically went out in the snow to buy croissants and a baguette and some other goodies for breakfast. Then Michael took papersky to the market to buy supplies for New Year's Eve dinner, and I stayed behind to bathe Alex and wash her hair. (Ugh. I lost that coin toss.) Eventually, rysmiel, zorinth, redbird, and the three of us set out into the snow to give papersky a clear field for cooking New Year's dinner. We tried to go to the natural history museum at McGill, only to discover that they hadn't thought it worth mentioning on their website that they were closed from Christmas to New Year's. Then we tried the fine arts museum, because it had sort of looked open when we drove past it. Nope. redbird and rysmiel suggested the Old Port, but I didn't think it was such a great idea to drag a toddler around doing outdoor sightseeing in the cold and snow. So instead we found a big-box bookstore and spent the rest of the afternoon browsing and hanging out in the cafe. It was a frustrating afternoon, but it ended better than it might have.

We came back to the house around six to find papersky slightly panicked because she'd had to rewrite a chapter of Half a Crown in the middle of her dinner preparations. I did a sinkful of dishes for her and then some general erranding, watching a massive traditional dinner for nine magically emerge out of chaos. She's posted about the menu, so I won't repeat the whole thing. Highlights: my first goose, which everyone had assured me in advance would be greasy but in fact was not at all. It tasted more like beef than it did like anything else I've had. The charcuterie plate served as an appetizer, which included duck bacon, some really good ham, and an odd but very tasty dried beef. And the figgy pudding, which I've been singing about since nursery school but had never actually even seen, much less tasted. It was good, but RICH RICH RICH. One doesn't really want more than a few bites. Alex "coincidentally" was the one to find the prize in the pudding: a tiny little lizard pendant she immediately fell in love with.

I put Alex in bed, where she sank like a stone and wasn't heard from again until morning. Then it was time for the New Year's Eve observances. Everyone had been asked to find something to read aloud. There would be a reading, and then some general conversation, and then another reading, and so on. It was a lovely way to spend the evening. I first read one of our picture books, The Everything Seed, which is a creation story based on the Big Bang. But then I happened to wander into papersky's office later in the evening and found a book of Eleanor Farjeon's fairy tales, and begged the chance to have a second round. I read the story about the six princess who lived only for their hair - kcobweb, do you remember that one? - and it was very well received. papersky read an extremely intriguing chapter from her novel in progress, and hobbitbabe blew us all away with something she's been working on writing.

At midnight we had a toast and some kissing, and then tramped around the house while rysmiel and papersky performed the ritual Changing Of The Calendars. More talking, and then to bed.

Tuesday and Wednesday
We were slow to wake up on New Year's Day. Alex came into bed with me and we snuggled until about 8am, which would normally have been lovely except that time turned out to be of the essence. When we emerged from the bedroom, papersky told us that 30cm (about a foot) of snow was expected that day. I spent some time on weatherunderground.com trying to figure out where the storm was coming from and how far it was likely to extend, and we decided that we'd better leave as soon as possible. And a good choice it was, too - by the time we'd originally planned to leave, in the afternoon, the snow in Montreal was apparently knee-deep.

It took us longer than I'd like to get ourselves fed, packed, and loaded into the car. We left Montreal at about 10:30, and it was already snowing. The visibility and the roads got quite bad as we neared the border - it was anxiety-provoking to wait in line there for half an hour, knowing that the roads would be getting steadily worse. Things cleared up as we drove south to Plattsburgh, New York, and I was briefly and foolishly optimistic that we'd outrun the storm. But then we came to Adirondack State Park. The snow fell steadily. Over most of the mountain roads, only one lane had been cleared. So any time we got stuck behind someone even more snow-shy than me, crawling along at 35mph, it was a gut-twisting adventure to find a place that seemed a little less bad to ease into the left lane and pass. And that was when the roads were comparatively good. There were long stretches where I didn't feel like I could go any faster than 40mph. We saw several cars off the road, including one that ran off just in front of us. It was a pretty white-knuckled drive.

We stopped for a late lunch in Lake George Village (site of many of my childhood vacations). Getting off the highway was a terrifying adventure, but once we got back on the plows had been through and the snow had slacked off. The rest of the drive to Albany wasn't too bad. I was exhausted, though - we'd come 220 miles in just about six hours of hard driving. So we stopped in Albany for the night. Alex picked the night we spent in the hotel to stop the preturnaturally good behavior she had exhibited up until then, which didn't mesh very well with my post-drive exhaustion. So it was a hard night, and a very long drive the next day (over clear roads, mercifully) to get back to Baltimore. Whew.

No matter how hard it was to get home, I'm still so happy that we went. It was a lovely vacation. I hope we can make it back to Montreal sometime soon!

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

That sounds lovely. Very cold, but lovely.