Royal Mountain

So here's a curveball. You know how I was expecting to feel about Toronto? Well that's how I feel about Montreal.

Initially I feared it would be terrible. The old town where the "sights" are is so touristy it almost hits resort levels. Once you're free from that, the city is immense, with its islands and its "mountain" and irs underground passageways and its neighbourhoods and its idiosyncrasies.

That's possibly doing the Old City a bit of a disservice. Its idiosyncratic enough. There's:
- a museum with an inflatable octopus outside.
- a view of Habitat 67. I first became aware of Habitat 67 about the same time as the Donkey Riding song in a kids' book of strabge buildings. I knew nothing about it (what it was called or where it was) and hadn't thought about it in over two decades, so it was a bit discombobulating seeing it loom large in front of me.
- a fire fountain. I feel like that should be in block capitals. A FIRE FOUNTAIN. An actual fountain of actual fire.
- a statue on the main square of a French person and an English person not speaking.
- an interactive art display that projects Montreal history onto the walls of buildings
- a man dressed as Jesus feeding seagulls from his hand. Not sure if he's there all the time. Let's assume he's an art installation.

But the neighbourhoods. I felt like I was making some of the places less cool just by being there. Particularly the Spectacles Quarter where I stumbled across Studio 16, which is the freshest art gallery I've possibly ever been in. It made peak era White Cube seem like the RA. My visit to the Quarter (and, well Montreal) clashed with a three day bloc party there. They had Jazzy Jeff DJ their street party. Ridiculous.

And we've not even talked about food yet. Food is a thing. I ate smoked meat sandwich at Schwartz, which was epic. Poutine covered three different shades of beige - not sure that that's three of your five a day. I ate tourtiere, which apparently is proper Quebecois home cooking at its finest. I had to work for it though, I could only find one place in town that served it (La Binerie if you are using this blog for anything useful - you shouldn't by the way, I've just told you that one of my highlights was watching a crazy man throw things at seagulls).

I ate a cheesecake Beavertail in Ottawa. I had assumed that that would be the dirtiest thing I ate whilst I was away. It wasn't. I've just eaten a croburger. That's a beefburger in a cronut. Utter filth.