On to Montral

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We Woke up to beautiful blue skies and 3 degrees heading toward a high of 18 in Montreal later today. Made my usual trip down to get coffee from the fancy machine in the lobby. Every other day I managed to get 4 cups, two regular and two café au lait, and get back to the room without incident. My luck ran out today, one of my café au lait hit the ground just as I got in the elevator. I am surprised I made it until the 4^thday to have a spill.

Today is mostly a travel day, packing up to head on to Montreal. Our train leaves at 3 and we will get into Montreal around 6:30 this evening. Before we leave Quebec City, we will head to one last crêperie for brunch, then back to the hotel to catch a cab to the train station.

After we finished packing, checked out of the hotel and stored our bags we headed to Casse-Crêpe Breton for breakfast. According to Fodor’s this was the place in Quebec to have crêpes and cheap. We anticipated a line and we were correct. Fortunately, we only had to wait about 15 minutes, if we would have been about 10 minutes later the line was out the door and about 30 to 45 minutes. Waiting the long in the cold would not be my idea of a good time. The wait long or short was worth it. The crêpes were probably the best we have had or at least tied with Renata in Arcata. We were first guided to a booth, that I was simply not going to fit in, even if I was at my goal weight, it would have been a tight fit. Instead I asked if we could sit at the counter, which they had no problem with. Most would not have liked the seats as they were right next to the main entrance and every now and then a cold breeze blew up your skirt (no we were not wearing skirts) but you got to watch all the action of the crêpe making. One woman made every crêpe ordered without a break. She pumped them out one after the other.

The basic crêpe was two items of your choice for $6.95 a $1 more for each additional item, a bit more for certain cheeses and meats. I had Jambon, Oeuf, Asperge, Champignon and Suisse (ham, eggs asparagus, mushrooms and Swiss cheese) with a béchamel sauce. Jerry had Jambon, Oeuf, Mozzarella Oignon and sauce tomate. He can only go so long without having something with red sauce. They were both very tasty and fun to watch being made. I videoed them while they were being made so you can see the process for yourself. This was the cheapest thing we have eaten on the trip; it was all under $25 which is $17.58 US.

After breakfast it was back to the hotel to collect our bags and get a cap to the train station, which is where we are now. The have free Wi-Fi, but because my employer feels the need to protect my IPhone I cannot connect to anything because the firm deems it unsafe. Hello Big Brother and not the stupid TV show. So we have about 90 minutes until our train leaves, but we pretty much saw everything on our itinerary for Quebec City so we will just enjoy the warmth and comfort of the Via Rail Business Class Lounge.

I have received a few comments regarding the blog, one from my sister Shari, referring to me as a food snob, I just prefer to say food critique. Another from my sister Connie asking me to list my favorite wines. All I can say to that is, there isn’t enough space on my blog for that and I would refer anyone regarding wine to my blogs regarding my 50^th birthday and France. I appreciate the comments, lets me know someone is actually reading this, but I really do it so Jerry and I will remember our trips when we are sitting in our rocking chairs looking over the Rhone Valley in our twilight years.

While I have some extra time, I can’t help but comment on the one thing that every place we have ever been has in common (with the possible exception of Paris) and that is the absolute sense of entitlement people have when walking on the sidewalks, especially narrow sidewalks. Why is every couple or group in the world more important than the next, when it comes to sharing the walkways? Everyone, and this is even more true for those under 35, seems to think that they own the sidewalk and hell is going to freeze over before they move aside for anyone. We always walk single file when on narrow sidewalks and always make sure others have room to get by. It was so bad here in Quebec City, predominately tourists I will admit, that we literally had to walk into the street with oncoming traffic to get by people. Ok, that rant is over.

The Train Trip to Montreal

Talk about entitled, American’s tourists are the worst. A woman and her very entitled daughter are on the train back to Montreal they are also in business class. She spent the first 10 minutes, from the second she got on doing nothing but bitching. “Well if its business class you think someone would help me with my luggage” and it only got worse from there. Business class, even if this is an older train, in Canada is 10x times that on Amtrak. There is a meal service, bar service all included in the price, Amtrak you get slightly more leg room than coach and free water. After her rant about the luggage she then decided she needed to harass the poor attendant: “What is the difference between this car and the next” response: fewer seats and more room. “What do I get for my extra $100 I paid for business class?” response, a meal, bar service. She had more but I am sure you get the point. You’re not flying first class so just get over yourself. It is still a train, the fact that you get seat side service for your meal and bar service, what more do you want? If she wants her ass wiped she is living in the wrong time period or she forgets she isn’t royalty, since Louis XIV got his ass wiped, but then we all know what happened to the French aristocracy during the revolution.

We had the same attendant back to Montreal as we did coming to Quebec City (she even remembered us), she again gave us the four seater with the table. The American Bee-ach tourist gave her a bad time I thinks she is great. Across the aisle from us is a nice Canadian couple on their honeymoon, they were married two days ago. Evidently the husband snores quite loudly and she hasn’t had much sleep or is that just an excuse for why she really hasn’t had much sleep J.

Jerry has spent the down time in Quebec City and now on the train, planning our stay in Montreal. He already has way more restaurants than we can possibly eat at picked out. He has already changed his mind once on where we are going tonight. The train ride back to Montreal should be nice as the sun will be setting soon and the landscape is freshly covered in snow. I just did my first work e-mail check and survived an entire 5 days without a single e-mail I needed to deal with. But the rest of the week could be different, hopefully everyone took advantage of the special take three days of vacation and only have to use 2 deal. We have spent the majority of the train ride looking for places to eat while in Montreal, we have eliminated almost everyone of Jerry’s choices from Fodor’s as they were all trendy, chic, etc. trying too hard to impress and not really putting out real food. As we neared the train station in Montreal, the passengers began to make their way to the baggage area of business class, including my favorite entitled mother and daughter. As they passed our seat, the daughter was heard to say, “I am still complaining about this train ride” I guess she confused the train for her princess carriage, or maybe she was upset because she could not completely recline her chair, although they went pretty far back. In any event her entitle self was just over it all. Not to be out done the mother quickly added that they still needed to get their luggage, the big one that she couldn’t even carry. Ok, unless she has a maid, I am pretty sure she packed her own suitcase, and if she can’t lift it, then perhaps she should leave the Tiaras and bitchy attitude at home, that would probably take several pounds off easy.

We just let everyone go buy before we got up to get our stuff and exit, much easier that way. When we got to the main train station, we tried to figure out the underground but really couldn’t. So we went back to the Via Rail lounge to ask if it was possible to our hotel from the train station using the underground, it is not. We bundled up and headed out, but not before the man at the information desk of the lounge asked if we came for the snow storm, we soon learned that over the next two days they were exception over 30 cm of snow, so looks like we may be stuck in our hotel room or need some sled dogs. When we got outside, it was not overly cold since there was no wind, but the sidewalks were pretty icy. The first stop was the ATM which was just a couple of blocks away. Jerry stayed with the bags as I traversed the ice to get some cash. On the way back I had to walk down hill and almost broke my neck. When I got back to where Jerry was waiting I quickly informed him that we would not be walking, if we wanted to arrive at the hotel in one piece. So instead we walked a block back to the train station and caught a cab to the Intercontiental where we would be spending the rest of our trip, literally we may not be able to leave it for a few days if the weather predictions are correct.

Check in was easy, once I got past the entitled family that needed to block access to the front desk, as you know, they own the world and no one else needs to get buy them or check in. I splurged on this part of the trip. We belong to three hotel rewards programs IHG, Hilton and Kimpton (which is now owned by IHG). The intercontinental is part of the IHG group so I was able to get a nicer room for the money. IN addition, they offered an upgrade for a few more dollars a night so we got a nice city/river view in addition to our king size bed. What I didn’t know is that it also included a full buffet breakfast every day, so one less meal to plan.

So here we are in Montreal, all checked in and unpacked. We are off to dinner somewhere close for tonight, who knows what tomorrow will or won’t bring, it’s totally dependent on the weather . . . We are back from dinner we walked from our hotel into the heart of old Montreal along Rue St. Paul to a place called Méchant Boeuf, primarily an upscale sports bar, but not too much of a sports bar. They were watching hockey but it is Canada so of course they were watching hockey and Montreal won. But I digress, we choose this place as they were supposed to have designer poutine, well they had one type of poutine but it was very good. We had a decent bottle of St. Emillion with dinner not to overpriced. I started with a large Cesar Salad, and when they say large it was huge, if I had known how big it really was I would have gone with the small. Any way, it was a decent salad as most Cesar Salad’s go, certainly not the caliber of Le Continental in Quebec City. It did have bacon in it, so how can that be good, could have used more dressing. I then had an order of the poutine Charlevoix with braised pork. It was excellent just not hot enough for my liking. Jerry had a Merchant Burger with a side of the poutine, the burger was huge but cooked a perfect medium rare and very well-seasoned. We were stuffed when we left, it was a good thing we had about a half mile walk back to the hotel. On our way home, we passed by Notre-Dame Montreal and some other nice buildings. It was cold but not windy but the storm hits in a few hours so what we will wake up to is yet to be seen.

That wraps up day one, full day tomorrow depending on the snow, if nothing else we have a great view to watch the storm.

P.S. Sorry about the video's it seems that the blog no longer is uploading them and the alternative method is far to complicated for my low-tech brain.

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Comments

[Shari]

Entitled People
I hate traveling near people who complain about every little thing. It ruins the experience for those of us trying to relax and enjoy the ride. Of course, it seems to be a more common affliction with the younger generation. I hope my kids aren't some of the guilty ones. As for the food snob comment, I was teasing you. I like the commentary. It gives me ideas about what I might want to try when we actually go abroad. There's no chance Jeff is going to be daring. His stomach is too finicky for that.

[Andrea Vaughn]

working backwards
Reading backwards, discovered I wrote me last comments in the subject area...duhhh...so methinks you have earned well the food snob tag. You know what tastes good. I will only say this once (a year) and that is I look forward to the day when you get off gluten. The idea must be terrifying but these days it's not the terror I experienced when I got off the toxin 7yrs ago. Much easier now and with your imagination, should be no problem. guess it's just getting one's head wrapped around the idea, eh? Just want you as healthy as is possible, feeling good! Good review of crepery, likened to Renatas was cool. Will tell them and point out your blog when next in. Yes, you's are making some fab memories when you find yourselves in your rocking chairs...the Rhone Valley?? Can't get a fix on this but feel it a European valley? Be well, me darlings!