return to Montreal

 

At the beginning of the month the three of us spent a long weekend in Montreal, for the wedding of one my old roommates.

Things that went really well:

• Meeting the partners of my two favorite roommates!
• Traveling three times zones east was way easier than traveling three time zones west.  We did our best to keep D on a Seattle schedule and we still got to do evening activities, like the wedding.
• We rented a little apartment in the Plateau through airBnB. It was in a charming neighborhood and it included a playpen/baby bed.
• There's a “new” route 747 airport shuttle bus which has replaced the metro-metro-bus-bus route I used to have to take to the airport. Back in the day, the second bus didn’t even run on Sundays so Jack and I had some long cold walks across expanses of highway and airport parking lots.  This new bus is quite an improvement.
• With Jack’s enforcement, we didn’t check any bags so we were able to hop on an earlier connecting flight from Chicago to Montreal.
• We had putine at the Mariott, which is only the 2nd or 3rd time I’ve had it and Jack’s first time.  It was decadently tasty.
• Bringing the stroller, after some debate.
• D likes looking out windows and watching the ground from the airplane window was fun.
• D got a cute new hat and some adorable booties.

Things that didn’t work so well:

• I had to bring my laptop and squeeze in a day’s worth of work due to an important deadline at work.  Lame.
• I kind of forgot that credit cards are not as ubiquitous as in the US and so after intentionally spending most of the 65 CDN I found in a drawer at home, we found ourselves in the unpleasant situation of having no way to pay for the meal we had just eaten at a diner.  We were traveling light with one credit card and we were nine dollars short.  Jack had to go to the bank and then eventually back to our apartment and to the bank again to get a debit card, which worked at an ATM but not at the restaurant.  I got to entertain D for an extra hour as a voluntary hostage at the restaurant.  In addition to Canada’s less credit heavy style, they, like the rest of the world, are switching over to chip cards.  I won’t travel abroad relying on our out-dated and unsafe magnetic strip cards again.
• The Chicago airport was backed up when we passed through it on the way home.  What’s new?
• This resulted in us missing the last light rail when we got back to SeaTac.  Without a car seat, a taxi wasn’t an option so we had to call Jack’s step dad to come rescue us at midnight and drive us home. 

Returning to a once-familiar city after several years was interesting and mostly quite pleasant.  While we were in school, Jack visited enough times to also notice changes.  We saw the city with older and better traveled eyes, which led to lots of interesting discussions. 

I think walking around with Jack (and D) has to be one of my favorite things to do.