an almost perfect montreal day

Today is Saturday May 28th and it is the first Saturday Dan has off for 7 weeks since his last intensive French course started. He had his exam and last class two weeks ago and last saturday he went to a music festival in Victoriaville with Joseph, Caleb and Joel. BTW Dan was pleased to learn that he not only passed his French class but recieved a mark of 71%, which was even higher than the previous class. Way to go Dan!

So today we slept in, made waffles and poached eggs* (see recipe below) and had yogurt, fruit, orange juice and espresso. Mmm. We re-arranged our kitchen and put the microwave on top of the fridge and have an actually decent amount of counterspace now. This greatly facilitates the preparation of waffles and other breakfast materials at the same time.

After breakfast we got ready and caught the bus at 12:30 to the metro and then went to Lionel-Groulx to walk to Atwater market to the snobby epicerie to get the best jam in the world (Annette de Boulangé from Oka) – Strawberry and Aprocot this time. We also went to Super C, the low-priced mega grocery store across from Atwater where we got some fruit (1.50 for strawberries!). Then we caught the metro to Chinatown and went to the bank, bought some dumpling wrappers and had Vietnamese sandwiches for lunch (only 2.75 each!) while sitting in the square there. Then we had a nice walk to rue Berri where the new library recently opened (look for more in a following post). We walked back to downtown and went towel shopping in the Bay. After looking at and sqeezing every type of towel and humming and hawing, we finally decided on two sets of Wansetta towels which felt the softest and had smaller threads (half price today). We went to the square just south of the Bay (Phillip’s square) and made the mistake of sitting under one of the trees where there happened to be about 20 pigeons. After about a minute, we noticed it was “raining” and quickly moved to another spot. I ran to the nearby Burger King to grab a handfull of napkins, we cleaned up the pigeon shit and braved the consumeristic hedonism of Futureshop to look for an obscure classic movie that Dan wanted to find (“King Solomon’s Mines”) and believe it or not, we found it!

We then sat in the very nice, quiet square in the middle of Place de Cathedrale, an odd mixture of a church, Anglican Church of Canada offices, a mall and an office tower. This pleasant square had an octagonal fountain in the middle and a resident population of sparrows who were polite enough not to shit on us. Highly recommended if you need a break from crowded St. Catherine’s st. We went to Indigo and bought some Paris and London pocket guides in preparation for our trip and then went to Café Crème on St. Catherine’s st (expensive, not very good espresso but nice cheesecake) where we read our books a bit. A lot of people were smoking there and a lady sat down at our table and started smoking without even asking us. Then Dan walked with me to the nearest Orange line metro (Place des Armes in Chinatown again) and Dan went to Paul’s for an all-nite videogame nite and I came home.

On top of everything, it was warm and sunny today. It has been cold and rainy for about 3 weeks and the heating in our building is off (and it can’t be turned on again because it is broken) so it was nice to get out in sandals and enjoy being outside for a change.

This is what a weekend is supposed to be like.

*Danny style poached eggs: this is a research topic Dan gave himself one day when working at a certain computer store. Instead of using those little poached egg cups, we boil a pot of water with 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar and crack the eggs into measuring cups and then quickly drop the eggs into the boiling water. After about 7 minutes, they are nicely cooked. Try it!