Chicago in pictures

The second part of my trip to Montreal was a visit to Chicago with my book (/wine/gossip) club.  It entailed deep-dish pizza, a visit to the top of the Hancock Tower, a boat tour, shopping, fancy sushi, a brief visit to the Chicago Marathon, and a lot of wine.

Magic hour in Wicker Park

A cool art installation on Michigan Ave

The bean

The bean, from beneath

Bean with tourists

Boat tour

It's almost Christmas!

Deep dish pizza

A hyacinth in my drink

Today: A Summary; also Impressions

I had intended to sleep a normal number of hours (I consider normal to be about 7) and wake up at a reasonable time, after which I had planned a route through the downtown, McGill University, Mount Royal, and then I was to take stock over a peaceful lunch.  Of course it went not very much like that.

• I overslept my alarm.  I don't even remember the thing going off.  Not typical for me.
• I walked through the downtown, explored a shopping mall, finally - in desperate need of food and coffee - stopped at a Starbucks.  That was not entirely my plan.  I do enjoy going to Starbucks on vacations, because it's interesting to see the variety they offer (Montreal Starbucks is somewhat European in their beverages - they don't even have drip coffee, which they had in Paris - and largely American in their foods - in some ways, more American than NYC Starbucks, which have recently given themselves a horrifying makeover to make their baked goods fussier) but it is also nice to try local places.
• I walked through McGill University and felt nostalgic for my own university days.  Not so long ago if we count the decade of post-college university life.  In most of Montreal, 75% of the conversations you overhear are in French; on that campus, 10% were.
• While we're on the subject of French, the whole language thing has made me feel very awkward.  It would almost be easier if I spoke zero French at all; then I would have to speak English to everyone always.  Instead, I speak enough French to conduct basic transactions, transactions in which nothing I don't expect occurs.  I can say hello, ask for a coffee, understand numbers and ask to be given a bag (I can also understand about half of what historical placards say and a significant fraction of overheard conversations, if I'm concentrating - it's just that dealing with people in real time is harder).  I cannot ask for a muffin if it's not labelled, and I do not know the French for 'swipe' (apparently they did not teach us this in 1994).  So I tend to start transactions in French, and then a third of the time I have to ask awkwardly if the other party speaks English (they always do, and always better than I speak French), and a third of the time they realize how clueless I am and switch to English themselves.  But I feel bad just going in there like Anglophone Commando and expecting them to speak my language as if everyone in the free world does even though, apparently, everyone in the free world does.  And the few times they haven't switched, maybe they didn't know how to speak English, and then how awful would it have been if I'd tried to make them?  I think there is a good solution, along the lines of returning a greeting of Bonjour with Bonjour, Hello, which is what shopkeepers seem to say to convey that they are happy to speak English.  I am guessing that responding to a French greeting that way would convey "I can speak a little bit of French but English is my preferred language," in some way more graceful than asking - in what I'm guessing is overformal grade-school diction - if they speak English, which is probably like asking if they can add.  But so far I have not pulled this off.
• Anyway.  Then I went to Mount Royal.  It's, you know, a mountain.  With trails and stuff.  I'm not sure how far up it goes - I would guess far-ish, because I saw lots of people with mountain bikes and so forth.  But it seems that most of the people there - runners and tourists alike - just go up to the observatory.  This is a shortish, steepish climb (maybe 200 steps?  and some uphill walking, but not a lot), rewarded by a breathtaking view:

• After relaxing in the sun for a while, and watching a much more enterprising person go through her exercise routine (including various drills I recognized, and an impressive backwards-climbing -of-steps-on-plank-position), I set off again.  The idea was to visit two districts mentioned in a tourist book I'd picked up somewhere, one of which was supposed to be sort of the Madison Avenue of Montreal (my words), with chic shops and the best outdoor cafes - I figured I'd get lunch there - and the other of which was called The Village and was described like a Montreal version of the NYC village.
• The Madison Avenue district seemed kind of down at the heels, relative not only to the real Madison Avenue but to Montreal's own downtown.  I did find a fussy food shop and bought some cheese and bread for dinner (including raw milk cheese, which you can't get in the States, and a baguette far superior to what you'd get in Fairway or Zabar's).  I found a frozen yogurt shop and a couple of fancy restaurants, but not the adorable outdoor cafe serving crepes that I was hoping for.  I nearly went into a couple of fast food places to eat the poutine that seems to be all the rage here (why?? it's french fries - already debatably not good - with gravy poured on them.  gravy is disgusting, and it would make the fries soggy and therefore inedible.  and then cheese curds or meat on top?  now it's just weird.) but the idea of the amount of work it would involve put me off.  I get nervous about unfamiliar lunch places at the best of times - they all have different rules! - and the language barrier and my increasing fatigue and hunger were certainly not helping.  So I found a lovely park, sat by a lake, and ate some bread and cheese.  I've had much worse lunches.
• The Village area was a disappointment.  I suppose it is a bit like what the NYC village may have been like in its heyday - back when it actually was edgy - but it didn't really feel safe, or even terribly interesting.  I made my way back toward downtown.
• On my way back, I stumbled into Chinatown.  This instantly reminded me of the last time I was in Montreal.  It was in March of 2004, for a conference.  One day, at lunchtime, I went with two groupmates - one a native of China - to Chinatown and had a very good, very inexpensive meal.  Another day, I walked around the old city, thinking about a boy I liked who was also at the conference and who, I was beginning to think, did not like me back as much as he sometimes seemed to.  Yet another day, an ex-boyfriend who desperately wanted to rekindle our relationship left fancy pastries at the front desk of our hotel, among the most romantic (and least appreciated) gestures anyone has ever performed for me.  Now, nearly a decade later, we are all in different places.  The guy I liked turned out to indeed not like me back (his stated reason being that I was not thin enough), and he eventually quit his job and moved away; I believe he lives in London now, earns a great deal of money, and - conjecture - dates a succession of beautiful and annoyingly-not-vapid women.  The ex-boyfriend endured a series of tragedies of all sizes before meeting his final and greatest tragedy; his story is sad, but I am reminded of him from time to time - we were close for years after our breakup - and I feel okay about remembering him, because he was a really good person, and not enough people knew that about him.  The groupmate from China finished his PhD and, after some amount of postdoctoral fumbling, found a prestigious research position in China, married, had a couple of kids, and as far as I know is living happily ever after.  The other groupmate also finished his PhD and became a sort of permanent postdoc for a professor who was later jailed for crimes of a sexual nature.  None of this is to any point, really.  I just think it's interesting what happens to people over time.  
• I am writing this from Starbucks (yes, again... I am very ashamed of my evilness, etc.), where I am about to start cheating on Nanowrimo by starting it early.

The Great White Warmer North

Today I am in Montreal.  (Yes, I'm doing a lot of traveling this fall.  No, I didn't really intend to.  It just kind of happened.)  I'm spending a couple of days here for no particular reason and then heading to Chicago to meet up with some friends.

The trip in took the entire morning but was uneventful.  I was very proud of my maturity, at first.  In my young and foolish days, I would have booked the first flight, at e.g. 7 a.m., so as to arrive as early as possible and get as much as I could out of my first day.  I would then have had to wake up at 3 a.m. and would have spent the entire day in a miserable, exhausted haze.  Now I am older and wiser and took a flight that allowed me to sleep to a reasonable-at-least-for-a-weekday hour, and I arrived at my hotel in the early afternoon.  After putting my bags down and eating a mature-adult lunch of trail mix, I set out to do what I typically do when I travel on my own to a new (or in this case, mostly new) city: walk until I physically cannot stand up.

(Side note: I have been attempting to train for the Philadelphia Half-Marathon and struggling with plantar fascitis... I could not decide whether to (a) bring my running shoes and try to get a desperately-needed long run in (I was doing very well until three weeks ago, when I ran almost ten miles at a good pace and felt okay the day of, but later felt I might be slipping into injury... I ran a much shorter long run the following week, and the plantar fascitis began after that... I replaced my shoes and skipped last weekend's long run, but things haven't improved and in fact my running has been short, slow, and sparse, my calves are sore and tight, and I feel weak... possibly the resting is the issue?  At any rate, it's becoming a pretty serious issue as far as my ability to run this race properly goes, although, (a) my ability to run this race properly is hardly a serious issue in itself, and (b) typically every time I train for a race I run into an injury, and illness, or burnout about halfway through, miss the third quarter of the training cycle, and spend the fourth quarter panicking and worrying about my under preparation... seems like I should by now accept it and not fuss too much), (b) bring my running shoes and do a short run or two, or (c) leave the running shoes at home, enjoy my vacation, rest and recover from whatever is wrong with me, and resume training next week.  I ultimately chose c.  Perhaps walking for 4.5 hours straight this afternoon was not the best thing for me and my now-extremely-swollen foot tendon.  Also, it would appear I am getting old, because several other body parts, e.g. hips, back, neck, are also unhappy about all the walking (not that I can remember a time that they wouldn't have been.  But clearly I am meant to be invincible and this deviation is a sign of moral weakening.).

So, anyway, what did I see in my walkings?  I saw the Old Port and the Old City, which are pretty much right next to each other, but which seem to be very different ages (at the very least, the Old Port has been redone as a park, while the Old City has been preserved as a tourist ghetto).  I saw oldish buildings, statues, park-y areas, art galleries etc.  It was very nice.  My only moment of unhappiness was trying to find a dinner spot, for which the only options available were overpriced tourist establishments with mostly-unheated patios (the weather was beautiful today, but not really sitting-outside-after-dark beautiful), all guarded by dragon-girl hostesses who were too busy greeting me to let me look at their menus.  In the downtown area (outside the Old City) there are many coffee shops and lunch spots but, as in apparently every city that is not New York, they all close in the middle of the afternoon.  So I have ended up with cheese curds and granola bars, which is not a horrible dinner as dinners go, but tomorrow I must try to do better.  Or at least to eat a proper lunch.

Prequel

Quick roundup of the last week or so, because I am a good and faithful blogger, really I am.  And because a life unrecorded seems an awful lot like a life entirely spent at work.

• Had a laid-back Sunday night dinner at Noi Due with my fellow traveler, a kosher Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side.  It was good food, and a pretty standard level of pretension for the area.  (I was going to call it "unpretentious", but then I thought a bit more and realized my bar for pretension has risen dramatically in the last few years).  I thought it was pleasant enough, with a diverse clientele (some very Old World types, mixed in with young JCCers on girl dates, plus a couple of multigenerational families), and would have been happy to add it in to our (highly informal) rotation, but apparently - according to FT - the point is to not have a rotation, but instead to visit a different restaurant every time we go out (or, at least, many of the times we go out) in order to experience the diversity of the city.  I am all for diversity, at least in the abstract, but to me the excitement of living in New York is not going to a multitude of different, unusual places, but having a small assortment of these places which become familiar.  This is partly, I believe, due to our differing experiences with small towns (we have both lived in what we consider small towns - but his was five times bigger than mine.  so to him, it's exciting to have an infinite number of restaurants.  to me, it's exciting to have more than one restaurant.) and partly a dispositional difference.  
• Had brunch twice in the last few weeks at Arte Cafe, another Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side.  I concluded that, although I do not like Eggs Benedict or Crabcake Benedict (because of the tartaryness of the hollandaise), I do like Salmon Benedict.  But I like it much better at Josie's, where the sauce is vegan and (I assume therefore) less creamy.  Really, I could do without the sauce at all.
• Attended the ballet.  It was a trio of small ballets, which I prefer to the longer ballets, in part because there are more of them and in part because I have a short attention span and like the contrasts.  I probably had some deep thoughts about the ballet while I was attending, but I can't remember them at the moment.