montreal, part ii

we got off the metro at mont royal and started wandering up the street, people-watching, looking for somewhere to eat, and STARVING. or at least, i was starving.

after wandering for a few blocks, and someone vetoing each place that was pointed out, we agreed to go back to one of the first places we saw to eat.

our waiter there ended up being pretty bitchy. we came up with a few hypotheses:

1 he was uncomfortable speaking english
2 he hated americans
3 he was having a bad day
4 he was just BITCHY

he was really slow about everything and didn't bring us the POUTINE we ordered [which was prolly a good thing because 1 we were full with the rest of the food we ordered and 2 poutine is disgusting] or the dessert that came with the specials until we asked.

but we made use of the long wait for everything by taking pictures of each other.

after eating, paying, & peacing, we wandered around mont royal a little more, looking for 1) somewhere to get more canadian money and 2) a liquor store.

money was easy: we soon found an atm.

asking people where to find the nearest liquor store was a little sketchier. got a few tourists by accident. also didn't want to ask anyone who looked my parents' age or up. but eventually we found our way there. i bought some gin, was carded ["do you have hi-dee?"], and gave them my real id and it was okay! how exciting. heart canada.

bought some toothpaste & shampoo in a cute little grocery store next door, then back to the hostel. we had some quiet time, freshened up, then started planning our evening.

this involved hanging our map on the wall of our gypsy caravan, going through a list of bars that looked fun [our criteria were: not too french & hopefully other young people], google-mapping them and marking them on our real map to figure out our route. we also started drinking a lilly bit of our gin. [we also might have watched the x-files?]

ka chu & klack left me and rian alone for too long and i started taking dark blurry pictures of him. see figure 1.

once it was late enough, we set out on the town, heading up boulevard st. laurent. we stopped for poutine, because ka chu's stomach is neverending. after poutine, despite all our little marks on the map, we only ended up going to one bar: bifteck. wikitravel says:

Some of the cheapest beer in town, served with some of the saltiest popcorn in all of Creation, consumed by bohemians and students from near and far (and the occasional honest-to-God rock star). Great place to start or end a St-Laurent pub crawl: to the south, you'll find trendy, relatively expensive places; to the north, some of the best dive bars anywhere. Or you can just stay and get tanked.

the popcorn was certainly delicious [& salty], and we downed two pitchers of beer along with it, making friends with some random bar people at the same time [a youngish couple who said they had just graduated from mcgill, i think].

by the second pitcher, i was pretty sleepy, so rian and i just went back to the gypsy caravan for sleep, while ka chu & clicky went off to have further adventures involving 99 cent pizza and too much hot sauce.

day one in montreal = complete.