And Away We Go

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This would be my 2nd destination New Years trip. Last years in New York was so good I decided to make it a tradition. Coming with me this would be my girlfriend Tamara. We have been dating for 3 months and this would be our first trip together. She is a wonderful lady and we have a lot of fun together. It would also be a good test for our relationship because we would only have each other for 2 days+. I chose Montreal partly for geography and partly because the Montreal people I spoke to heavily recommending it for New Years. We would be staying at the Chateau Versailles which is a hotel located in Old Montreal.

Thursday morning I found myself at Tamara's house. After a greeting with her dog Buffy we packed up my car and started the 6 hour drive to Montreal. I will admit I was nervous because we would have 6 hours of only each other to talk to. Thankfully we have similar musical tastes so we enjoyed each other's musical choices as we drove along and chatted. As we drove along Highway 401 Tamara mention an Apple store that was near Kingston. I remember the store because I passed it a few times on my previous drives but never stopped there. http://www.thebigapple.ca/ is located n Colborne, ON and you can see it easily because it has the largest apple statue in the world. It was winter so a lot of the attractions were closed. They have miniputt, ping pong and a train ride. We wandered around the store and bought some apple chips, coffee before heading out. It is an interesting store and we will definitely go back in the spring time.

The highways were clean and we made excellent time. There was a storm 2 days prior that had dumped 30 CM of snow on eastern Ontario and Montreal. Thankfully by the time we set out it was already cleared. Around 3pm we made it to Montreal and promptly ran into traffic "SIGH". I have driven within Montreal a few times for work and never enjoyed it. This time we were stuck in traffic for about 30 minutes and it appears to be just volume rather an accident. We pulled up to Chateau Versailles around 3:30PM and went in to register. I was planning to use valet parking but was informed that their parking lot was full. We managed to find a parking lot nearby which was good because we really needed to go the bathroom by that point 😞. This time we were able to register promptly and get our room keys. Chateau Versailles is a series of townhouses connected together. Our first attempt to find our room ended in failure as we went down the wrong hallway and got lost. We retraced our steps back to reception who pointed us in the right direction. We were a bit surprised that she did not say anything when we went in the wrong direction. Our room was quite nice but we wouldn't be spending a lot of time in the room anyway.

After organizing ourselves we went downstairs and spoke to the reception/concierge Camilla who would be quite helpful. She gave us a few maps and explained the metro system. We headed out into Montreal and it was a good thing we both cold weather shoes. It was still slushy and snow covered and it was kind of slippery as well. After some coffee we wandered down St Catherine Rd. This is a great street for shopping and I was going to buy some tourist stuff and gifts for my niece/nephew. We mostly just wandered around down the street looking at the stores and various erotic massage parlours available on that street 😉.

Our next stop was the Notre Dame Basilica. We took the metro to get there and we chatted with a nice Montrealer on the way. That is quite different from New York and London Metro where people avoid eye contact. I think he realized we were tourists so that was nice of him to give us some advise. After exiting the metro we went looking for Notre Dame and promptly got lost. After asking some Montrealers who pointed us in the right direction and finally using google maps we found Notre Dame. It is an impressive building and we paid the $5 to go in and another $1 to light a candle within the church. We sat down at the front pews and I tried to remember the Lord's prayer from my catholic high school days. I got almost all of it and Tamara helped me with the last verse.

We than left the church and went back to the metro. On the way back to the hotel we stopped for dinner at a nice Italian place called Molivos. We were both kind of underdressed for this establishment (me especially). The Maitre De asked us if we had a reservation but it wasn't busy so we got a table. Dinner that night was eggplant salad and calamari. The portions were large and the food was excellent. We left a generous tip because it was New Years Eve. We headed back to the hotel after this and rested a bit at the hotel.

After chatting with Camilla who we found out was a Brazilian who had a lived in Montreal for a few years. She told us how to get to the Old Port and Place Du Cartier where there would be a big party and fireworks. We took the metro to Place D'Armee Metro stop. We than followed the flow of the crowd to where the action was. It took us past the Notre Dame Basilica and we wandered down the decorated streets to the Old Port itself. It was a huge crowd that night and we saw groups from around the world. We bought a rainbow glowstick that a street vendor had. It was a nice souvenir but sadly I forgot to take it from our hotel room. We wandered around the Old Port and looked at the skating rink and finally ended up at the concert area. A number of French bands were playing and we slowly made our way through the crowd until we got close to the front. It was a loud raucous crowd of drunk and sometimes high people intermixed with families. We got jostled a little and one group held up a picture of a guy while shouting KISS, KISS, KISS. It took a few seconds for us to realized what they were shouting and we did kiss after figuring it out. I am guessing that is the equivalent of the mistletoe. By that time it was close to New Years and we counted down with everyone else and we kissed at zero

We watched the fireworks at midnight and it was a beautiful display. We than made our way back to the metro just going with the flow of the crowd. Some people actually tried to drive through this huge crowd but it was slow going for them. We finally got back to the metro stop while huddling together so we wouldn't lose each other. The metro is free after midnight and they removed the turnstile so it wouldn't slow down the crowd traffic. After a changeover we finally made it back to the hotel after a successful New Years out.

Montreal is a beautiful place to spend New Years and we were lucky enough to be there when it was warmer than average and without a snow storm.

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Photos

Erotic massage parlour
Erotic massage parlour