Ma petite vacance

Ooh, my French is horrible.

Anyway, that attempt at Francais was in honour of my most recent little holiday. We went to Montreal! I've been to Montreal many times before, because that's where my dad's family lives, but this was the first time I really got to be a tourist. The siblings and I all went, and my mom and her boyfriend were there too. Us kids stayed at the downtown Y which was great because of it's location. It was like we were backpackers again!

The grownups took us around in the rented car, up Mount Royal, through pretty parks, past the sites, into Old Montreal etc. Very nice. However, when left to our own devices, all we did was shop. Shopshopshopshopshopshopshop. I bought quite a bit, or so it seemed at the time. Of course now I wish I'd gotten more. Oh well. We also went to synagogue for Yom Kippur services (serious day of atonement, shortly after the Jewish new year begins). That was nice too. It didn't seem nearly as long and tedious as I expected.

We also checked out Montreal night life one night. At $7 a pint, the prices were much higher than we're used to in our hick town, so we did the classy thing and bought some booze from the dépanneur, which we then consumed over card games in our room. Just like the days spent crossing Russia and the Baltics. Lots of reminiscing as we kept saying "a year ago today we were looking at the terracotta warriors", "a year ago today we were walking the Great Wall" etc. We had fun sifting through old memories of days on the road.

Anyway, we were on a very lively street, nothing but pubs and clubs. Loads of people everywhere, a really vibrant atmosphere. Man, I wish we had something similar in lame old Winnipeg. But we don't. Because we're lame. After a pub drink we tried out one of the clubs. Very young, very ethnically diverse crowd. People speaking French, people speaking English, people speaking a variety of other languages. I must say I was disappointed though. After seeing oodles and oodles of gorgeous young men on the streets of Montreal, there was not a single piece of eye candy in this entire bar. Boo! Jennie and I did get a good laugh at the dancers on stage though. Typically, in Winnipeg anyway, it's girls that hop up on the stage or speakers to shake their booty around. But there were nothing but guys up there. And about 5 guys were dancing in a line, facing the dance floor, all wearing similar dress shirts, all unbuttoned to mid-chest. It was hysterical! You'd think the unbuttoned shirt look was actually a dress code requirement. So ridiculous!

So that was Montreal. Shop-shop-eat-shop-shop-drink-shop-shop-dance-shop-shop-somberatonement-shop-shop. Comme j'aime être une touriste!