Advertisement
Published: July 21st 2008
So we arrived in Montreal at 10:30 on Monday. We were going to attempt to catch the train to the hostel, but with my massive suitcase, shoulder bag, laptop bag & handbag, and Vanessa’s TWO massive suitcases, we didn’t like our chances. We thought a taxi might be the best way to go. Only the taxis didn’t want to take us either, so we had to get a taxi each. My taxi driver was alright, but did the dodgy and didn’t put the meter on for the ride. Vanessa’s driver was less than pleasant. Vanessa had to ride in the back with one of her suitcases, cause they wouldn’t fit in the boot. Because her luggage is so heavy, the driver told her that she must tip him $15 just to load and unload the cases. Vanessa wasn’t a fan of this idea, and opted to carry her own luggage.
We got to the hostel and were greeted by Ollie at the front desk. By far the nicest person I have ever encountered at a hostel. He helped us store our bags, showed us around, and recommended a good place to get poutine. Although we were in desperate need of
showers (if we had gotten a caricature drawn of us, I’m pretty sure it would have included stink lines) our check-in wasn’t until 1pm. So we sat in the common area for a couple of hours looking things up on the internet and talking with other backpackers.
Finally we could check in, the first thing we did was have a shower. That was the greatest, most indescribable shower of my life. I can only draw parallels to one of the times we did the 40 hour famine in high school. We had toast with penisbutter on it afterwards, and it was the best toast ever.
We managed to get tickets to Pineapple Express, Seth Rogen (my future husband)’s new movie. So we went downtown to pickup our tickets. The area of Montreal where the Comedy Festival Box Office is is pretty shoddy, with homeless people and rundown shops. All the shops sell toys and other things that look like they’ve been fading in the window since the mid-70s. We got our tickets, along with a Laughtime Guarantee card, which gets us tickets to a show (we chose one called Bubbling with Laughter, which has lots of comedians, including
Arj Barker!!) and free last-minute tickets to shows. Score!
The only last-minute tickets that were available for that night were for a movie called Baghead. We hadn’t heard of it, but thought we’d give it a go anyway. Sometimes it’s better not to have heard of a movie before you see it, because you have no expectations of it, therefore cannot be disappointed. In theory. This movie blew that theory out of the water. It was so very bad. Painful.
The next morning we slept in until 11:30. Sounds late, and I guess it is, but I’m going to justify it by pointing out that it would have only been 8:30 in Vancouver. We went and had an Indian Buffet. We had hardly eaten the day before, so when we saw the buffet with endless varieties of curry, naan, pizza, chips, tandoori, etc., we were in heaven! As always, we dished out more than we could eat, and a fair amount of food went to waste. The desserts were some of the most vile foods I have tasted. So weird. The rest was yummy though. We went for a walk to find a supermarket, and finally found an
IGA. We came back with our goodies and Ollie remarked at how far we had walked, and that we had passed two other supermarkets on the way there. We asked what they were called, and he rattled off a few random French words. No wonder we walked past them!
Tuesday night was the beginning of the real comedy festival for us, we had tickets to O’Comics, a group of Irish comedians, and Late Night Down Under, a group of Aussie and Kiwi comedians. The Irish comedians were hilariously hilarious. David O’Doherty and Jason Byrne were there, and they’re two of my favourites. Jason Byrne usually does very physical comedy, drags people up on stage and forces them to be part of his act, swearing and cursing the entire time. This time he did a lot of regular stand up, and he was just as hilarious. David O’Doherty did stand-up, with a few of his trademark plastic Yamaha keyboard songs thrown in. A guy called John Lynn (I think) was there, and he was good too (easy on the eye too). Even the host was hilarious. He was asking everyone where they were from, as they do, and it turns
out Vanessa and I were the only Australians in there.. Which was surprising.
Next up was the Aussie/Kiwi show. It was hosted by Adam Hills, which we were excited about. He was not on that night, not funny at all. The show started off with a Kiwi comedian I’ve never heard of, and he was pretty good. I thought were were up for another good show! Not so much. The Kiwi was followed by a list of unheard of Aussie comics, most of whom had been living overseas for 10+ years. They told jokes that related to the UK or US, which really was not the point of the night. There was one lesbian girl who was pretty funny though, she was from Tassie. Tripod were there, who I’m usually not a fan of, but they kinda saved the night, cos we had heard of them. Gud performed too, I effing hate them. I felt bad cos we had invited our English friends to come, and the comedy was just embarrassingly bad.
The next morning we woke up reasonably early and went to explore Old Montreal. As the name might suggest, Old Montreal is the historic part of Montreal.
It’s lined with cobblestone streets, old buildings and beautiful churches. The prettiest of those churches is Basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal, which you can pay to go see. Absolutely gorgeous inside. All the public funerals are held there, and it’s where Celine Dion got married. There is one modern-styled building in Old Montreal, but a law has since been passed that states that no new buildings will go up. The new building looks out of place, so it’s a good thing they’re trying to keep it as old-looking as possible.
After checking out Old Montreal we went downtown again, to where all the action is during the Just For Laughs festival. We found that nothing happens during the day, and it only comes alive of an evening. We saw a few short films for free, most of which were a little weird. We were just glad to get out of the blistering hot mugginess that was outside, and into the blissful air-conditioned comfort that was inside.
After the movie the street festivities had finally started, and we got approached by a guy who worked for the festival, who gave us free tickets to the Joan Rivers gala! He asked us
if we like her, to which I immediately spat out “NO!”, because I hate her, but Vanessa acted like she was more of a fan than she really is. Lucky for her dishonesty! Joan Rivers was completely as I had expected, over the top & crude.. But you get that. I wasn’t surprised to see that she was reading everything she said off of a teleprompter. She obviously doesn’t write her own material. I hadn’t heard of any of the comedians in the first half, but most were really good! We had tickets to see SouthPark at 9:30 so we had to leave at intermission, which was a letdown because Jason Byrne was due to come on in the second half. We gave our tickets to a young French couple, who seemed wary of us and our generosity, acting as if we were sending them to a dark alley where they might be bashed and robbed.
We had a quick look at the street festivities that are all part of the festivities, and saw a giant preying mantis, the Duracell Bunny, a group of deer on stilts, mime artists, and a house that is being built out of sticky tape.
It was heaps of fun.
So off we went to the South Park show. You could tell straight away that we were there to see a show about little cartoon kids that swear and fart a lot, the age of the audience was early - late twenties, instead of the usual mix of young and old that you get at other shows. The show was pretty good, Trey Parker and Matt Stone sung their songs, with classics including Uncle Effer, America, Eff Yeah & Kyle’s Mum’s a Bitch. In between songs they spoke about South Park, Team America & Orgasmo, and showed clips. They didn’t talk about Baseketball at all, which I was a little disappointed about. We waited outside to see if we could get a photo with the guys, but we only saw the back of Matt, as he ran down the street away from everyone. We did see Judd Apatow and Kathy Bates though.
We didn’t have anything planned at all for Thursday night, so we went down to the box office and told them to plan our night for us. We got tickets for David O’Doherty (yay!) and a show called Hoodwinked that we
had never heard of.
We went to the Montreal Observation Tower, which is a slanted tower that is part of the Olympic Stadium. The tower serves the purpose of lifting and lowering the roof to the Olympic Stadium. The elevator up to the top is cool, it’s on the outside of the tower and you go up on a strange angle. The view from the tower, however, is not as impressive. Montreal is a very pretty city from street level, with all the gorgeous old buildings and sculptures, but from above it’s very flat. Montreal has a law that states that no buildings can be taller than the mountains that surround Montreal, so as to not overshadow them. As a result, Montreal is left without skyscrapers. It was still good to see though.
We then went to the Biodome. The Biodome was once used as a velodrome, but has now been converted into a wildlife museum. It was pretty cool, we saw beavers, limas, penguins, monkeys, birds, fish, turtles etc etc.
David O’Doherty was awesome, as usual. There’s something about his nerdiness and Irish accent that gives him a certain charm. We got there early, so got seats at the
front. We were lucky enough to see him do his own sound check and he sung a song. Yay! This year is his first year to Montreal, so noone knows him here. Tickets were only $17, and it still didn’t sell out. At home he’d go for about $40 and sell out in next to no time.
Next we were off to Hoodwinked. Oh. My. God. So good. They basically act as con artists and show you how easily everyone can get done over. One guy was a psychic, who read your body language and facial expressions. He chose Vanessa and I to participate in one of the scams, but asked us to sit down again cos we were too hard to read. Damn! He got everyone he chose to think of a card, and then by reading everyone’s body language, guess which card they were thinking of. He got 3 out of 4 right. Pretty good! He also got people to flick through a book and see the first word on the top of the page. By looking at your facial expressions, he was able to guess the word you had read. He got that right each time.
Another guy was a pickpocket. It was really funny to see how easily he would pickpocket everyone in the audience. He got so many people’s wallets, phones, watches, belts, suspenders, everything! They had no idea. Then they showed a video of pick pocketers doing it on the streets, and that was scary. Makes you rethink how much of your life you carry around with you everyday!
Another guy was a card dealer who was so good with everything, the way he dealt and stuff was amazing. Turns out he was blind. The tall thin guy from Drew Carey was in the audience, and they chose him to be part of the card trick, and he got done over.
They also took information from this lady’s phone that they had pick pocketed, just from her phone number, name, and city she lives in they were able to hack into everything about her. They showed us pictures of her as a baby, pictures of her house, INSIDE her house, where she works, her resume, even her online dating page! She was so embarassed. They were also able to access her social security number and credit card details. A little
Our room
Not ALL of that stuff under the bed is mine.. Some of it is Vanessa'sscary!
When we were lining up we were asked to fill out a survey for the chance to win a free iPhone. Turns out there was no iPhone, and they now had all the information they needed to hack into everything about us. I was shitting myself, thinking of all the things they might be able to pull up on me. Thankfully they didn’t hack into any of our information. So although the show wasn’t really a comedy, it still left me amazed, and with some things to think about!
The next morning I went on the Hop-On-Hop-Off tour of Montreal. These tours are usually a good way to see a city, because they take you to all the main attractions/sites, and make it a lot easier to get to them. This particular one went for 2 hours and took you to a few churches, through Old Montreal and everywhere else. I didn’t hop off, the only place I would have hopped off was Old Montreal, but we had already been there. It poured with rain towards the end of the tour, so we had to go to the bottom level of the bus, instead of the top, uncovered,
level of the bus. I then went shopping for a bit in the “underground city”. Basically most of downtown has an underground part, and you can shop and eat and see movies, all without going outside. Awesome in Winter, I’ll bet!
That night we went to a comedy show called Bubbling With Laughter. It was like a mini-gala, with lots of comedians. Most were really good, with only one or two letdowns. Arj Barker was there so I was happy!
We then had plans to watch the street festivities before our next show, but they were spoiled by the rain. The rain in Montreal is like nothing I’ve seen before. You’ll be walking along and without warning the rain will start. It doesn’t start off with little spits or even showers, it goes from no rain at all to absolutely bucketing down. You’re soaked within a matter of seconds. Crazy. So we hid out in shops from the rain, but had to walk in it eventually. We tried on heaps of crazy sunglasses in one shop, they were awesome. Sadly, there were no street performances that night because of the rain, so we went and lined up in the
rain for our next show, Apatow For Destruction.
This was one of the shows that I was absolutely itching to see, because Seth Rogen, my future husband, was part of it. The show was a huge let down. They had lots of the small stars from Knocked Up who all did stupid acts, like singing songs and stuff. I laughed a few times, but for the most part wanted it to be over, which really disappointed me because I wanted it to be good. We got some good shots of Seth though, so I was happy. We missed the last train so had to get a taxi home. When we got near the hostel, there were police cars and ambos everywhere, someone had had a drug overdose. Awesome.
We only got in at about 3am, so I slept until about 11 and Vanessa slept til about 1:30. We just bummed around the hostel all day, doing laundry and not a lot else. We then went into the box office to see if we could get any last minute tickets, but there was nothing left. We looked around for a while and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant. It was
awesome. I had a margarita that was practically the size of a fishbowl, and chimichangas which were the size of Mexico. So. Ridiculously. Full.
We then went to line up for the premiere of Pineapple Express, Seth Rogen’s new movie. We were second in line, so got first dibs of a good seat. We had to surrender all our cameras and phones, I guess they were afraid someone would film the movie and leak it onto the internet before it is released. We saw Greg Behrendt, the author of “He’s Just Not That Into You” (should be every girl’s bible!), and the guys from Tripod. Vanessa minded our seats while I went into the lobby to watch for Seth and co., they were hanging out the front doing interviews and getting photos taken. He walked right past me into the green room. I was so excited, you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I was even more excited when Vanessa told me he would be sitting a row behind us, until they changed that and he sat a few rows behind us. Le sigh.
So Seth, Judd Apatow and the other stars of the movie came out and introduced it, and then it was viewing time. The movie was awesome, really funny. The whole time I could hear Seth’s very recognisable laugh, so even he enjoyed it. After the movie they had question and answer time. I couldn’t think of anything witty or interesting to ask, so refrained. I stole a movie poster from the theatre, and we had to line up for ages to get our phones and cameras back. We managed to get what turned out to be the last train home, but had to walk back to the hostel from the station we had to change at, as there were no trains left.
When we got home our roommates had turned the heating up to 40 degrees. Gross. We’re always the last to come in of a night time, so we always find that they have turned the thermostat up to 30 or 40 degrees, but we have the last say and turn it down to about 20 degrees. I bet they hate us for it too, not only are we coming in at 2 or 3am every night, but we’re making the room cold and sometimes being less than quiet. Although we try to be as quiet as possible, my locker is the noisiest thing on earth, and we usually get the giggles up for some reason or another.
Sunday was the last day of the festival, and the night of the All Star Gala. We had managed to get tickets to it, and were really excited. The night started off promising with Danny Bhoy, the only comic in the lineup that we had heard of. He was good, as always. After that the show seemed to go downhill. Each comedian failed to make us laugh. There was one lady who spoke to a man in the audience for most of her set about the plays he was planning to do with his school kids this year. Usually when comedians talk to the audience they manage to get something funny out of it, not this lady. Painful. Vanessa and I both hated it, and were relieved when we saw Vicki & Mary, our friends from England, because they had hated it too. Such a letdown.. Oh well. All four of us then went and had margaritas.. Yum! We said goodbye to the girls, as we won’t see them again, they’re leaving for home in a couple of weeks. I liked those girls, they were fun.
So, Montreal in general. It’s quite pretty, I like all the old buildings and churches and things. The French-speaking part of it is a little odd, and it’s hard to remember that you’re in Canada half of the time. I thought that most things would be in French AND English, but it’s really not. A lot of it you can work out, just from a few words that you might recognise, but when people speak to me in French I have absolutely no idea what they are saying. The public transport system is awesome, the trains are massive and quite regular. Nothing we have been to has taken more than 10-15 minutes to get to. Awesome. The subways are all so hot though. I guess because they’re underground, and they don’t seem to be air conditioned at all.
Up until 3pm yesterday I hadn’t worked out where I was going today. I had planned on going to Quebec, but the hostel there was fully booked. Then I thought maybe I’d head to Halifax in Nova Scotia, but that hostel is also full. Finally I found that the hostel in Ottawa had availability, so I’m heading there! I want to go to all those places, so I don’t really mind when I do where. I’m spending a couple of days in Ottawa, then heading to Halifax, then Quebec, then back here to see the Osheaga Festival, the Killers are headlining. Yay! Then I’ll work out where to go after that, maybe Chicago before New York. It’s all a little exciting, but I’ve worked out that I have to be a little bit more organised and book things, as the hostels fill up pretty quickly.
Sorry for the length of this blog, and congratulations if you’ve made it this far!!
Kirsty xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.172s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.05s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Laura W
non-member comment
Wown you've been busy. The comedy festival is so you, and always the way with good and bad acts. Very long blog, and i had lots of commets as i was reading, but now im at the end i forget them all, so yeah lol. have fun on the rest of your travels and keep the details posted!!