Montreal, 1999
This was supposed to be another huge trip to Montreal, but Elixxir and co
had to cancel and so did most of the rest. It ended up being Ray and Liz
and myself, but I still went over to their house on the Thursday before we
were to leave in order to do some planning. They were holding a dinner
party, and I met Olimpia there. It turned out that we had exchanged email
before this, and she ended up getting invited to come along with us.
Jul 30
I finished packing and fiddled around until it was time to head out at 3pm
to get gas for the trip. I ended up getting stuck in traffic just heading
to the 7-11 gas bar, but managed to reach Ray's workplace just ahead of
Liz and Olimpia. We had to stop in at Ray and Liz's to get the keys for
Liz's parents house in Montreal where we would be staying, and Ray also
picked up the role playing notes that he wanted to work on for next week.
I decided to try driving up Kingston Road instead of going up the Don
Valley to the 401, since it was a long weekend and traffic had the
possibility of being horrendous. Hardly any traffic slowed us down until
we hit the 401, but we were through it fairly quickly. I stopped outside
of Kingston for food and more gas at around 8:30pm. We took the smaller
highway into Montreal, and Liz directed me to the house, arriving at
around 11:30pm.
We went over to Mad Hatters, and I looked around for Lee, Alain, and
Casper, but we all somehow managed to miss each other. They all ended up
going to the Sphinx but we stuck around Hatters all night. Olimpia and I
went for a couple of walks to get away from the loud music and we met some
Argentinian girls at a jewelery stand. I bought a pinky ring and we
continued on. As we were turning back towards the bar, we ran into some
guys from Mexico who knew Olimpia's ex boyfriend's brother. We got back to
the bar and I had another grapefruit juice, avoiding alcohol due to the
antibiotics I was on for my ear infection. We left at around 3am, teasing
and laughing our way up the hill back to the house. Olimpia and I traded
backrubs, and she managed to get some of the knots out of my back from
driving. My room was kind of odd since there were no closets and I was
sharing a bathroom with Olimpia.
Jul 31
The house keeper, Cynthia, woke me at 7:30am, trying to find Liz to ask
her about the alarm that we'd set off by mistake coming in last night.
They'd assumed it was one and in disarming it, armed it by mistake. They'd
found the code to give the alarm service when they called and we assumed
everything was taken care of. I pointed her at the master bedroom and went
back to sleep until noon. I grabbed a shower, struggling to keep the
shower door closed and not get water everywhere, and mostly enjoyed the
fact that it was cold water raining down on me. The water warmed up just
as I was finishing up. Liz told me about having to take a cold shower on
her wedding day since she didn't have time to wait for it to warm up. I'd
attended the wedding and reception that had been held in the house, but
this was the first time I came upstairs. We all eventually got up and
clean, and headed out to do some wandering. Ray went grocery shopping for
us and then spent the day inside working on his notes. Liz, Olimpia and I
wandered along Ste. Catherine, above and below ground. I picked up a
FantAsia program so that we could take in a movie while the festival was
still on. We tried on hats and browsed the neat tights in a swank
department store. We stopped at Sirens where Olimpia bought a top, and I
made a note of the store to visit one in Toronto. We stopped at a cafe and
had lunch/dinner, then headed to Rockaberry and was defeated by a huge
slice of truffle cake. We hit Rio, but the ruffly shirt that I had wanted
to get wasn't as impressive when I tried it on. I drooled over a window
with a rose covered purse box in it. We ended up catching a cab home
since we were so tired from walking around all day. I called Alain and
left a message, actually caught Lee at home and invited him to the party.
At this point we began setting up for the party that evening. Olimpia and
I helped Liz label and load the huge CD changer and barred off the private
areas and put up a few signs. People started arriving and I spent most of
the time avoiding the smokers and chatting with Alain and Lee. I went up
to bed at 3am and then came back down again to turn down the stereo which
had stayed up far too high after someone's favourite song. I managed to
shut out the people talking in the hall outside my room and finally fell
asleep at around 4am.
Aug 1
I woke up after Ray and Liz did, and had a shower while they were eating
breakfast. I helped clean up a bit and Ray called Etienne to remind him
about the movie that we were going to see. His brother had to wake him up
and none of us were really surprised when he never showed up. We took a
cab to the Imperial for the movie and were able to get tickets just before
show time for the Jackie Chan Young Dragon/Master show. It was quite
funny, and there was a very impressive 20 minute long fight scene at the
end. Liz, Olimpia and I walked up the hill to see the tam-tams, a regular
Sunday event that just grew up over the last 10 years. Tons of people
bring their drums and sit in a few groups and jam. Others dance in the
cleared spaces in front of the drummers. We wandered around the mini
bazaar set up on mats around the main statue in the park, listening to the
sound and the beats change as we went in and out of range of the different
drumming groups. As we were heading back home, before we left the park, we
lay down on a hill and watched the clouds go by. Liz tried taking a
picture of the three of us with our heads together on the grass, no idea
if it turned out okay or not. We made plans to go to a park in Toronto on
a more regular basis (but it's not materialised so far *sigh* that was a
nice break though). We watched a man roll down the hill like I remembered
doing when I was young, though I didn't have the guts to get down and roll
myself. :)
We walked to Hatters and Ray joined us just as the waiter was taking our
order. We all felt pretty partied out after the last two nights, so we
decided to just rent movies and stay in this evening. We checked out
another cafe to see if anyone they knew was there, but there wasn't, so we
headed over to the rental place and picked up Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
are Dead and a couple of others that we ended up not being able to stay
awake to watch. I left a vague message with Alain's dad and he ended up
waiting for us to show up at Studio.
Aug 2
We stuffed everyone and everything back into the car in the morning.
Stopped just past Kingston again for a gas and smoke break. Traffic was
horrid around Coburg, despite no one working on the construction. Once we
hit Toronto, it was clear sailing. I dropped Ray and Liz off, then Olimpia
and then made it home safely myself.
Back to my diary page.