May 23, 2007
Adirondack Adventure Day 3: More of Montreal
Erica and I ended up going on a walking tour of churches in Montreal. There were just so many pretty ones, and it was easy to see their spires, domes, and towers and ask "What's that?!" and walk over towards it.
But we saw other things along the way, like this building at McGill (we visited McGill again the next day, so more pictures to come).
And Erica pointed out the old high school (was it really high school? I don't remember for sure) hang out of her guy friends:
That is, until they ran into their math teacher there.
I liked how this building was made more modern while still maintaining the old architecture.
Let me tell you something disappointing. The Canadian dollar is gaining value. The last time I was in Canada, the exchange rate was about .82 to a dollar. Now it's more like .92. People! Our country is in serious danger if the Canadian dollar becomes equal to ours! Plus, it really messed up my shopping plans.
Here's an equestrian statue that reminded me of that Billy Collins poem, "Statues in the Park," in the New Yorker that Tanker had me read once. I'm gonna paste it here because it's good.
Statues in the Park
I thought of you today
when I stopped before an equestrian statue
in the middle of a public square,
you who had once instructed me
in the code of these noble poses.
A horse rearing up with two legs raised,
you told me, meant the rider had died in battle.
If only one leg was lifted,
the man had elsewhere succumbed to his wounds;
and if four legs were touching the ground,
as they were in this case-
bronze hooves affixed to a stone base-
it meant that the man on the horse,
this one staring intently
over the closed movie theater across the street,
had died of a cause other than war.
In the shadow of the statue,
I wondered about the others
who had simply walked through life
without a horse, a saddle, or a sword-
pedestrians who could no longer
place one foot in front of the other.
I pictured statues of the sickly
recumbent on their cold stone beds,
the suicides toeing the marble edge,
statues of accident victims covering their eyes,
the murdered covering their wounds,
the drowned silently treading the air.
And there was I,
up on a rosy-gray block of granite
near a cluster of shade trees in the local park,
my name and dates pressed into a plaque,
down on my knees, eyes lifted,
praying to the passing clouds,
forever begging for just one more day.
Here's one of the domes that caught our eye. As we approached, we found it belonged to the Marie Reine du Monde Basilica.
This monument was found in the park across the street.
We wondered who MacDonald was, and where were the statues of Champlain, Cartier, etc.?
On the other side of the park is St. Georges Anglican Church.
We slowly made our way towards Vieux Montreal. We found Notre Dame:
But didn't even think to go inside. We were starving and intent on finding some place to eat. I kept thinking we'd come back to it, but we didn't. Later, we saw a picture of the interior on a postcard and were mad that we didn't go inside because it looked beautiful.
I kept trying to figure out where the building was in the picture I had stolen from the Internet and posted earlier on this site. I thought I found it near the park, but it wasn't quite right. As we got closer to Old Montreal, I saw the real thing:
We ate at a little, expensive restaurant on the terrace, and it was getting cold! I won't say it was the best dining experience ever, but it was still better than that turkey sandwich in New York City. The buildings were all lit up afterwards.
We decided to take the Metro home because our feet were tired and it was all uphill back to our hotel.
We found the Metro Station, walked in and had to figure out how to use it. There weren't any machines to buy fares at, so we went to the teller. I asked, in English, how to purchase a ticket, and she replied, "Eh?"
"A ticket? How do we get a card?"
"No, no credit cards."
I thought I was going to have to break out my dusty French (which I secretly wanted to do, but was terribly embarrassed by), but I tried one more thing. "The fare? How do we pay the fare?"
"$2.75"
So we got the ticket, but she didn't tell us what to do with it until we couldn't get through the turnstyle and she had to poke loudly on the glass next to a little container where we apparently had to drop the ticket she had just given us.