Can You Hear Me Now?

Okay, okay, I’m sorry, I’ve fallen WAY behind. I haven’t written my usual rambling blog for weeks, and I still owe you the details of my trip to Montreal. My bad. It’s just that I’m in another phase where I have so much work to do, I don’t want to spend time at the computer writing in here when there is Facebook and shopping on eBay to be done (our dollar is so good right now, I’m almost finished my Christmas shopping!)

Okay, so, let’s get to Montreal.

Monday, September 17

Emma, Gaby and myself get up fairly early, finish packing, check out of the Toronto hotel and cab it to the bus depot. I take a seat right in the front, Gaby and Emma sit behind me. I’m hoping the seat beside me stays empty, because that’s always nice. Then I see a woman out the window arrive at the bus with all her clothes and things in a clear plastic garbage bag. She hands her bag to the driver to load with the other baggage, apologizing “I don’t usually travel like this, but…” and climbs the stairs. Naturally, she sits next to me.

Most of the trip was uneventful, a stop at Tim Horton’s for lunch and coffee… I like to travel by bus, I have decided, the seats are way more comfortable than airplanes. The lady next to me snacks on processed cheese slices, unwrapping them and munching directly off the plastic rather than peeling the slice off with her hands. It was a sight to behold… rather, uh, dog-like. Lucky for me, she got off in Kingston, ON and the rest of the trip (another 3 hours, I think?) I had the two seats to myself.

Emma got off the bus at the first Montreal stop, because it is closer to her house. Gaby lives downtown, so she would get off at the downtown stop with me and cab to my hotel to help get me settled. It was around 7:30 pm when we arrived at the bus depot. We got a cab, got to my hotel, and I’m really thankful Gaby was there because the whole hotel-situation was not as accessible as I’d hoped it would be. From where the cab could park to the hotel doors there were several curbs we had to go up and over because of a bike path in front. Then the hotel itself… well, I had received a call saying they were not “wheelchair accessible… our doors are not wider or anything… but we are handicapped accessible”. To me, that is pretty much the same thing. To them, that means they put one bar in the shower and that’s it. Even to walk in the door of the hotel room there is a raised piece of wood to get over.

Anyway, the room was really cute otherwise… a little kitchen and everything. Full fridge, stove, microwave… but the toilet was LOW and no bar to help me get up from it. I broke the counter behind the toilet the first night by pushing down on it to get up. Oops. Gaby went home after I got settled and I went to bed!

Tuesday

Tuesday pretty much sucked. I was on my own all day, because Emma and Gaby have school, and I hadn’t made plans to meet Tim and Noelle yet, or my friend Patricia. So I made a few calls that day and left messages with people, planned to meet Tim and Patricia the following day, and decided to do a load of laundry using the coin laundry facilities I knew the hotel had. I needed clean underwear and pajamas! First I took a shower and almost fell in the bathroom because of the lack of bars/poles and SPACE. I had to have my walker in there as something to steady myself as I came out of the shower. That meant there wasn’t exactly room for me.

I rounded up my change and went down to the laundry room floor. Steaming hot down there. HUGE step with no railing to go up and over to get into the laundry room, while struggling with a heavy door. Of course I had no soap, so I purchased a little package of Tide and a Bounce sheet out of their machine. Instead of a Bounce sheet, I received a liquid fabric softener. CRAP! I don’t even know how to use liquid fabric softener! Final rinse cycle… when is that?? Heh. It meant I had to sit in that steaming hot room and wait. I was not happy, but at least while my things were in the dryer I could leave for a bit and use the computers with free internet access on another floor. A floor with air conditioning. (Oh yes, the air conditioning in my hotel room was awesome, I’ll say that!!)

After laundry and computer time, I decided to venture outside of my hotel and see if there was a store really close by where I could buy a few groceries and snacks. And get a good coffee, or even a latte if I could be so lucky. Oh, yes, this hotel kitchen had TINY tea cups for drinking your coffee out of. NO THANKS. I wanted to get a big coffee in a big cup that I could use again tomorrow!

There was a store nearby, so I headed over there, stepping over and around all kinds of construction and boards. I walked in the store and… 3 big stairs, no railing. The coffee machine was right by the door, thankfully. I did manage to get myself and my walker up the stairs (at least they were wide) but once there, I had no idea what to buy. I don’t even know what language the things in this shop were. It certainly wasn’t French. There was a deli case with meats and cheese, but I was looking for bread, peanut butter, that sort of easy food. I did see a jar of Nutella, so I bought that. No bread, so I bought what looked like round breadsticks I could dip in Nutella. I also bought some sort of what appeared to be chocolate wafer cookies. Nothing was written in any language I recognized, so I went by the pictures.

I paid for my goods and a large coffee, went to the machine to get it, and tried to follow the instructions that were in French. Luckily it was a similar machine to one they had at the Carewest place I was in last year, so I managed to get my coffee. Then I had to stumble back to my hotel over curbs, curbs, construction and more curbs without spilling said coffee. It was then (once back inside my room) that I noticed the expiry dates on everything I had bought were long gone. The chocolate wafers were stale. The breadsticks were hard as rocks. I didn’t even open the jar of Nutella that expired in 2005, but I doubt that stuff goes bad anyway. I was just so pissed off and tired that I didn’t care at that moment. I ate some stale chocolate wafers (or, wafer… it was one big slab, not cut up like cookies) and threw the rest away.

I left another message with Noelle about maybe meeting for dinner that night. I texted Gaby to see if she could come meet me, but she had too much school work to do (she sort of slacked off homework in Toronto). Emma wasn’t going to be able to come over and stay with me until the following night. So, after a certain amount of time passed and I knew I’d be on my own for dinner, I decided to treat myself to a lovely meal at what was supposed to be a “fine dining French cuisine” elegant restaurant at the base of my hotel. I wandered in and sat at a cute little table with crisp white linens. A guy in faded jeans and a sweatshirt (?) came over and asked if he could help me. I asked to see a menu. “We have no cook tonight.” Excuse me? “The cook did not show up tonight. I am the bartender, no one else is here. I can make you chicken and fries, that’s all I can do.”

**insert hysterical laughter or tears here**

So, I ordered the chicken and fries. And you know what? It was the best damn chicken and fries I’ve ever had. The chicken breast was HUGE, grilled to perfection, perfect spices, and the fries were crisp and hot. That poor bartender was on his own making and serving drinks, handling the cooking of chicken and fries for anyone who wanted it, while trying to explain to hungry irate customers that there was no cook that evening. I gave him a MASSIVE tip.

When I got back up to my room, there was a message from Noelle saying she had just come home from the hospital, as that is where they have been spending most of their time… her aunt is very sick with lung cancer. So I called her and we chatted for awhile, and I heard about the sad state of her aunt’s health, who, by the way, passed away early the following morning. In July she had been in perfect health, dancing at a wedding, looking vibrant and healthy… in August she was diagnosed with lung cancer, and then she was gone September 19. 70 years old.

Wednesday

I’ll get back to this later! I actually started doing stuff with other people on the Wednesday. I know so far it sounds like I had such an exciting time hanging out in my hotel in such a beautiful and exciting city like Montreal. Go me!

You can see all the pictures from Montreal part of my trip in my public Facebook album.

Pita checks out all the new CDs I bought from the indie artists I saw while I was away.

One of Pita’s regular hangouts is my walker… seriously she is on that thing several times/day. I have the only walker in the world losing its padded handles to claw marks.