Moulin and Montréal

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We had a difficult day yesterday and an inauspicious start to our time here in Montréal, but fortunately everything turned out fine. Our last evening out in Québec City, Wednesday night, was spent at the Moulin à Images, or Image Mill. This is a pretty slick multimedia 3-D slideshow. What makes it special is that the slides are projected onto the massive grain silos north of downtown – 600 meters wide and 30 meters tall, and the spectators are facing the silos from across the Bassin Louise, a marina. The slideshow reveals the history of Québec from before European explorers to the present day. Like the Cirque du Soleil, it’s free. You just show up with your blanket and find a place to sit, and there are speakers along the marina that play the accompanying music. While we enjoyed it, it didn’t hold a candle to Cirque du Soleil. The 3-D thing is always lost on me.

Dan and I are used to traveling with kids, hiking with kids, camping with kids. I think that we are pretty good at not scheduling too much for them. When we’re on our own, however, we tend to try to cram as much vacation into a day as possible, usually fueled by copious amounts of gelato. After all, we are the ones who wrote a blog entry while in Paris that was entitled “Death by Louvre,” which detailed a 9-hour death march that included much more than the highlights of the Art of Western Civilization. We are the ones who spent our last day in Maui hiking 13 miles across the Haleakala Crater, at an elevation of 9000 feet under the blazing tropical sun.

As such, we have been attempting to remain cognizant of our daughters’ pace and interests while here in Québec. But the stress of yesterday must have been too much. More than an hour after lights-out, the girls were both still awake. After we’d gone to bed, Arden came and told me she thought she was going to throw up. In the bathroom, I stroked her hair as she clung to the toilet, her skin gone pale but not clammy. As she knelt there, I could tell she wasn’t really going to throw up, but I would stay there with her as long as she needed.

She looked up at me, her blue eyes teary, and said, “Mom, I think I’m homesick.”

And right then, I realized that I was homesick, too, missing my bed and my shower and my routine. But what really caught me, in that space above my heart, was this little one’s interpretation of what homesick would feel like. And I think that really, really being homesick does have some unpleasant physical symptoms. Poor kid. She finally fell asleep and woke up feeling much better this morning, especially facing the prospect of no longer having to share a bed with her sister.

And late this afternoon, we found ourselves at our Montréal apartment, having returned our rental car and taken a ride with a friendly but pessimistic French-speaking Haitian cabbie. We are in a decidedly up-and-coming neighborhood, as evidenced by abundant graffiti, hip clientele and sushi chef at the local IGA grocery, and apartment buildings that are either gentrified or in some state of disrepair. Luckily ours is in the former category. We are on the third (top) floor with a great porch / deck, a selection of DVDs and books (Arden has already finished Roald Dahl’s The Twits). We grilled tonight and ate dinner on the deck, having had some time to regroup. I think we will enjoy our time here.

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Photos

Maples
I like the interplay of lights and darks in this photo.

Dan
the geocaching man

Short cannon
Did I mention the cannons in this city? They are EVERYWHERE. This one is especially short and cute, especially with Madeleine in the photo.

Waterlilies and Dragonflies
Reminiscent of Claude Monet's garden at Giverny.

Street musicians
The little boy in the Adidas shirt was not part of the act, but he was very much into the act.

Moulin à Images
The part of the slideshow depicting a fire.

Moulin à Images
Another shot of the slideshow.

Dinner in Montréal
Cheers!

Samifruits
Fruit and vegetable mega-store